The Bourne series is the filmic equivalent of Bourne himself – frosty, tough, intruiging, paranoid. It’s a also excellent.
What makes it so good? I think it’s the locations. They are almost all European. London, Madrid, Paris, Moscow. Cold, wintry, sparse, bathed in morning blue light. In the last installment he goes to Morocco. It looks hot, but everything else about it feels cold and foreign – the language, the architecture, the people. And in a nice piece of symmetry, when Bourne finally arrives in New York it is a bitter, snowy winter’s day.
The paranoia is also cranked up to absurd post X-files proportions. The US government, the CIA and various other shadowy, unacknowledged organisations are capable of spying, watching and listening to anything you do or say. They spy on each other. The rot goes right to the top.
There are also some interesting running motifs in the series – car chases, the symbolic cutting of Bourne’s female associate’s hair in the first and third parts.
This is a quick post, and remarkably weather based, but to sum up: go and see The Bourne Ultimatum.