Five years ago, an American language action superstar was
Bourne - matured, red-blooded and as singular in his own way as Britain’s James Bail bond. Flatness Damon has now played rogue Central Intelligence Agency operative Jason Bourn three times, each time memorably in what has become one of the most electrifying espionage series in Hollywood history.
The evidence, like lightning in a bottle, has been collected in a DVD box put. The Jason Bourne Collection arrives Tuesday, along with the separate DVD debut of the up-to-the-minute instalment in the franchise. The box plant contains the single-disc, widescreen-only DVDs of The Bourne Individuality (2002), The Bourn Supremacy (2004) and, of course, The Bourne Ultimatum (2007). If you already own the first-class honours degree two Bourne movies - in whatever of their various incarnations including the extended version of The Bourne Identity or the three-disc Bourne Files box set - you do not want this new offering.
Just add Ultimatum as a stand-alone. There is, however, is a bonus fourth disc packaged in the new box set, perhaps to entice or torture completionists. It comes in its have top-secret sleeve, which what looks like Jason Bourne\’s passport and information packet. Appropriate because he unravels his identity crisis in Ultimatum. With the bonus disk, The Jason Bourne Collection is a perfect gift for someone who has not yet experient a full blare of Bourne adrenalin. It is a rush unlike any other.
These are quality action pictures that deliver the requisite jolts without sacrificing a depth of character complexness. Damon\’s jagged edge in the role is fascinating because he never panders to an urge to make Bourne lovable or even likable. He is blemished, dark, dangerous, potentially insane. Uniquely, audiences root for him to succeed, to escape, and yet we simultaneously understand wherefore his espionage bosses - Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, the peerless Joan Allen Stewart Konigsberg — want him neutralized. Poignantly, because we so readily start roiled up in Jason Bourne\’s cloudy world, this is the end of the line - maybe.
Damon, who established his mainstream box office moxy with the series, spent months on the promotion trail for Ultimatum joking that a fourth movie would have to titled The Bourne Redundancy. “We have ridden that horse as far as we can,\” Damon said. But the waffle is already in play. He recently told Agence France Presse in Tokyo that he might be enticed again. Especially if two-time Bourne director Paul Greengrass, who replaced Bourne Identity film director Doug Liman on the series, besides returned for another instalment. In another ready-made metaphor, Damon reportedly said: “I don’t think either of us completely put the type to bed until now.”
The intriguing contribution of this story is that it may not matter if there is no reprise. Bourne is already a phenomenon. A trilogy may be sufficiency. Contrary to the pattern of most movies that get sequelized, the Bourne series improved both its critical rating and its box office with each instalment. Remarkably, the product budget, while too heading up, was kept under ascendency.
It started at $60 million for Identity and maxed out at $110 million for Ultimatum, tastefully modest for a big-budget with so many action sequences in locations from New York to London, Capital of France, Madrid and Tangiers. Meanwhile, the world box seat office (according to Box Office Mojo) grew from $214 million on Personal identity to $288.5 million on Supremacy to $437.5 million on Ultimatum. Clearly, there is an enormous public appetite. Paradoxically, that crataegus oxycantha be Damon\’s worst nightmare. Money could propel the franchise to continue, with or without him.
