The Bourne Ultimatum

[MacGuffin]

I'm looking forward to finding out about that window jump shot. I'm guessing it was some kind of Skycrane.

Here's the entire article I quoted from:

How 'The Bourne Ultimatum' got its thrills
Franchise's latest installment takes the action to new heights.
Source: Los Angeles Times

Jason Bourne could destroy Indiana Jones if it came down to a fight, according to Dan Bradley, the mastermind behind the action in "The Bourne Ultimatum," its predecessor "The Bourne Supremacy" and Steven Spielberg's upcoming fourth installment of "Indiana Jones."

"There are two actors I've worked with who would make top-notch fight guys as actual stuntmen, and that's Matt Damon and Harrison Ford," says Bradley, who is officially credited as second unit director and stunt coordinator, but is known in the industry as one of the preeminent action directors working. Despite the real-life actors' fighting abilities, and even figuring in their age differences, Bradley still thinks Bourne would kill Indy. " 'Bourne' is pretty hard-edged, realistic stuff, and 'Indy' is very much cliffhanger, B-movie, old-school action style," he explained on a recent phone call from the "Indiana Jones" set in Hawaii.

For that matter, Bradley says, Bourne could take James Bond and Spider-Man too. (He speaks from experience, having directed the action on the second and third installments of "Spider-Man," and he's about to jump into director Marc Foster's "Bond 22" in Europe.)

"People are really entertained by a big cartoon, but I don't think people are as convinced on a visceral or emotional level" by Spider-Man, Bradley explained. "Whereas I think James Bond is more about gadgets. With Bourne, it's more about his sheer intellect and will. I think the reason Bourne has captured the audience he has is because he's a thinking man's action hero."

With "Bourne Ultimatum," Bradley delivers three big action sequences, each bound to influence the action-direction canon in some way. First is a chase scene on foot inside the bustling Waterloo train station in London, where Bourne meets up with a reporter (Paddy Considine) who knows his spy agency's secrets.

It is followed by a breathtaking rooftop chase and brutal fight sequence the crew shot for 14 days in the medina in Tangier, Morocco, during Ramadan. The action is centered on Bourne and Desh (Joey Ansah), a newer black-ops agent, who has an order to kill Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles). In one shot, touted in the movie's trailer, Bourne leaps down from a rooftop to crash into a picture window. The action was captured by a stuntman who jumped right behind Bourne while carrying a small, lightweight Arriflex 235 film camera.

"I very often hand cameras to stunt people," Bradley said. "They're not too freaked out about getting hit or sliding under something while holding a camera. Some of the best shots in 'Supremacy' and 'Ultimatum' are because the stunt guys were operating."

If anything differentiates Bradley's approach to choreographing and shooting action, it is this first-person point of view that he said he gleaned from his days working as a stuntman.

It was the bare-knuckle, six-minute car chase through a Moscow tunnel in "Supremacy" that catapulted Bradley into the limelight, making action directors around the world reconsider how to stage convincing action set pieces.

"I always try to make it very, very real," he said. "So, I used my own experience as a stuntman. I've driven in hundreds of car chases, and I always saw these amazing things that were never captured on film. So my intention was just to go out and shoot my own experience."

For "Ultimatum," Damon and the studio asked Bradley to devise a condensed version of his Moscow car chase sequence. But this time, he was given half the screen time and taxed with incorporating the same amount of action while setting it all in Manhattan's congested streets in the middle of the day. Bradley put Bourne in a small police car and has the amnesiac spy doing skateboard grinds off of cement barriers.

"I think it's a bit of a gamble to do another big car chase," Bradley said. "There's an argument to do it and there's an argument to do something different. But they wanted a newer car chase. So I am anxiously waiting to see how the audience reacts to this one."

According to Bradley, the real secret to avoiding action that looks staged in the "Bourne" films is rehearsing a great deal then going for a chaotic and frenetic blend of action. "I tell my camera department that I really want to feel lucky that I got to see the moment," said Bradley, who, as second unit director, typically runs a second unit camera crew. "I don't want them putting the cross hairs on the action and panning on the scene perfectly. I would rather feel like it's going so fast and furiously that it's really hard to keep in the frame. The hard part is that camera guys train their entire careers not to do that. They train to make it smooth and perfect. I just go in and tell them to 'F it up more.' "

[Redlum]

Wow. Thanks Mac.

I hope a making-of crew captured that.

[pete]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=4bKAKsC4Pf0

I think a few different making of videos all had that shot in different sizes.  The camera operator was on a harness rig.  He didn't jump through the window but off of the rooftop.

the hong kong film "time and tide" had a lot of shots like this, in which the cameraman swung bounced around between buildings on a cable, following the action.  check it out if you're bored.

the rooftop chase was still very cool though.  as I've been insisting--pakour is going to be the new hip thing and in a year or two, you'll be seeing pakour in every other action movie, just as they've been doing flying kungfu for the past 10 years.  pakour will take it over.  however, in bourne ultimatum it did not feel like a nike commercial (like it did in the first bond movie) or anything trendy.  they added a lot of gritty details (like the broken glass), a lot of geography, and a few vulnerable characters, to make the whole scene feel very engaging.

[bonanzataz]

i was asleep during this whole sequence and woke up just as it was ending.

[fulty]

I think I wet myself.

[Pubrick]

to replace bergman..

Stina Nordenstam cowboykurtis and fulty: STILL ALIVE

[Ravi]

the hong kong film "time and tide" had a lot of shots like this, in which the cameraman swung bounced around between buildings on a cable, following the action.  check it out if you're bored.

I bought Time and Tide ages ago.  I can't believe I haven't watched it yet.

I can't add much to the praise for this film.  This is a tight, entertaining action thriller.

[Ravi]

David Bordwell's take on the Bourne style

[pete]

wow, I guess when you put enough monkeys in front of enough keyboards with matt damon in their minds, you do get a few paragraphs of grammatically correct sentences.

[Jeremy Blackman]

Finally got around to seeing these movies. The first one is meh (except for the car chase with the little red car). Supremacy was good and a clear step up in realism. But Ultimatum is amazing. I can't think of an "action" movie that I genuinely like more than this.

In particular, the Waterloo sequence (the surveillance chase scene) completely blew me away. There have probably been other surveillance chase scenes, but surely none as complex and beautiful as this one.

[pete]

yes that was the best.
I think speilberg in minority report tried something like this, but didn't really build up like this.
I mentioned elsewhere (or on facebook?) in a conversation with GT, about the action films that sum up an era. He said Die Hard really defined the 80s, as themes and aesthetics all added up to this one movie at the end of the era. Then we had dozens of movies imitating that premise. Similarly then, I thought Matrix summarized the 90s. And in the same way, I think Bourne Ultimatum did it to the 00's.

die hard was about the excess and nihilistic greed, as the Christmas-ignoring, mega rich Japanese are kept hostage by thieves posting as ideological terrorists.

matrix had that y2k paranoia coupled with some kinda multicultural fantasy, in which, beneath all the machines that keep us isolated and selfish, there is some kinda tribal, east meets west, one-philosophy-fits-all connection that will help us triumph over the machines.

and bourne tapes into the bush-era confusion. it didn't start out that way but began heading that direction as the series went on. it's one american trying to absolve himself of sins that he didn't know why he'd committed in the first place. it was about the dangers of that nationalistic fervor.

then there were all the action aesthetics to go with the movie. the die hard series tapped into the thrillers in the 70s, all about how the EveryMan is able to trump the odds and outwit and out-brawn insurmountable obstacles. but as time went on, the EveryMan in the movie slowly becomes more and more super-heroic.

And that comes in a time where Jackie Chan, the Ultimate EveryMan, blurs the line by performing superheroic feats and doing his own stunts. Then there comes this stunt fetish, which crosses its path with the maturation of computer technology. All of a sudden every actor is Doing His Own Stunts, and coordinators and directors are outsourced from Hong Kong. Then the audience grows tired of the EveryMan, of the gritty or realistic action heroes, and big ridiculous movies, starting with The Rock (Which still has that EveryMan Trapped in a Place Against Evil Guys) plot, and out of all that comes The Matrix.

So after The Matrix, the game changes, and everyone is flying and doing kungfu. Every SuperHero is now a martial artist. While most of the studios still follow that model to this day, there begins a more "liberal" strain of mainstream filmmaking where the hero is a journalist, uncovering international conspiracies that are Ripped from Headlines (which is an evolution of the post-matrix paranoia, except it's now political as opposed to technological), all the while moving away from the Clancy-esque intrigues to something much more simple; Innocent, Civilian-Minded EveryMan Who Happens to be a SuperHero (bourne, bond, Hanna, liam neeson in Taken, the new "gritty" Miami Vice, Clive Owen in The International...etc.) battles something Americans vaguely know something about.

It's also this relentless American obsession with realism - even in fantasies, Americans want these feats justified - Crouching Tiger begins with an explanation on kungfu people's "enlightenment", Matrix uses the computer programs, so now, especially after The Seals having taken out Bin Laden, we are going to get a bunch more movies where specialized tactical training will justify every spectacle.

So, as it emerges - super spies and special forces are our new super heroes (who were the EveryMan), parkour and closer quarter combat have taken over flying and kungfu.

rambling over