The Bourne Ultimatum: Thoughts

A bizarrely specific box office “report” recently asserted that—pound for pound—Matt Damon was the most profitable actor in Hollywood, a fact that, until The Bourne Ultimatum, I had refused to accept. Damon and his elfish good looks seemed too ordinary for such a title. Whereas Tom Hanks owns his askance geekness, and Tom Cruise his unbalanced and crooked face, or even the way Brad Pitt manipulates that Californian speech impediment (from Oklahoma!) to blur adonis beauty in a way that makes us question how much grey matter may have been lost in the creation of such a physical specimen, each of them, justly, earns their place as a legitimate Hollywood face. Damon was always too boy scout, a fact that has helped his career (for instance: making him the perfect bone to fetch in Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan). If there was a trademarked flaw in his visage to be found, it was a slight bulbous mass at the end of his otherwise flawless nose, and he was unable to even retain the sliver of a Bostonian accent that Mark Whalberg has spent a career trying to ditch. In short, he was rather bland. Yet he kept making movies, and I kept watching.

As an actor, Damon was solid, whether it was memorably dismembering Harvard and MIT snots, or obsessively lusting after idyllic British “mates” to homicidal affect, he was a rock. And then, one summer: The Bourne Identity. And here was Damon, much like in Good Will Hunting, playing a supernaturally talented special ops agent, disarming Swedish policemen as quick and as rough as he did Ivy League cads. Jason Bourne wasn’t much of a stretch for Damon, a juiced up Will Hunting who, as if one his way to see that girl, decided to stop by the NSA and instead take that job his buddy Ben Affleck pissed away, soon finding himself, after a bit of mental rewiring, diagramming assassinations instead of Math proofs. In fact, the speech Bourne relays to Franka Potente’s Marie in The Bourne Identity is almost verbatim the speech he gives Minnie Driver’s Skylar back at Harvard in Good Will Hunting… only without the sugar. Damon’s performance in the first Bourne film was jittery, amazed, as if, for the entire film, he kept thinking: “Holy cow! I’m Matt Damon: action hero! No way!” Sadly, Matty, this was no joke. The Bourne Identity went on to make $120+-mil and a sequel was made (The Bourne Supremacy), this time with British filmmaker Paul Greengrass at the helm. Greengrass tackled the convoluted plot of secret Black Ops training and Russian oil barons with what seemed like a digital handheld and a can of Jolt. The effect was strange…nauseous, really… and… incredibly, awesome. Damon still seemed startled by the hubbub, and, by the end of the film, we couldn’t help but sense his bewilderment evidenced in many of Bourne’s growing ticks: the shifty eyes and hands, the quick furtive glances over his shoulders. Still, coupled with Damon's performance as eager rookie heistman in the Ocean films, we were mightily entertained, but wondered, like Damon himself, when we’d finally see that there was no way he could be super-agent Jason Bourne, and that to push it with a third film might risk venturing into self-parody: Austin Powers without the laughs. After all, Bourne was no Bond.

But something clicked with Damon the actor during the filming of The Bourne Ultimatum. Here he was, accepting and confident in his role as blockbuster super-spy, and, in re-teaming with Greengrass, successfully blows the lid off of the “Summer of Three’s”. Bourne has lost the ticks. His face is at once serene, while at the same time staunchly virile, soaked in espionage to the point it is hard to determine whether he is being cold, calculating, or both: the ultimate intimidating poker stare. Damon, at last, sits confidently in the role he now appears born (ugh!) to have played. Greengrass senses it too, and, more than ever, steadies the shaky camera on Damon’s suddenly lined visage, and we, knowing completely that this is a killer, more importantly a killer searching to understand his motive, must nervously look away. As for the plot, not much seems to have happened to advance the Bourne Universe. He’s still running. Covert heads of skulduggery (this time David Strathairn) still bark orders to computer techs in dour suits, while the constabulary bounce futilely off Bourne and his various modes of transportation. But who cares with talent like this, committed and confident. Here’s to hoping big brother never gives up the chase.