Original subtitles

MOSCOW, RUSSIA

Straight in, Bourne on the run.

The key question, making this film, was tempo, I thought.

This is the third installment of the Bourne trilogy

and I wanted to set the tempo high from the off.

Why? Because all movies are ultimately chase movies

and I wanted this film to be all about Bourne getting answers,

getting towards the end of his journey,

the chase reaching its furious crescendo,

and so, from the first frame, I wanted the tempo to be high.

So, here we have Bourne on the run in Moscow,

and that was one of the first decisions, actually, that was made on the film,

was to start it in Moscow

and to start the film earlier than where Bourne Supremacy had ended.

That was an important choice.

Tony Gilroy's choice, actually, the screenwriter.

And in the end, I think that choice comes down

to the fact that Bourne is looking for answers.

And when you look at the end of Bourne Supremacy,

you realize that he ends up in New York, having just left Moscow,

and you wonder why he went to New York.

What happened between his leaving Moscow and arriving in New York?

Why did he come to New York? What happened in the interim?

And that's what Bourne Ultimatum is all about.

Send him in.

The difficulty, of course, with any Bourne film

is that the story exists in several time frames.

You've got the story of Bourne being chased,

but you also have the story of what happened to Bourne

in his hidden past, in the flashbacks.

And in these flashbacks,

I wanted to give them a strong contemporary edge.

One of the things, I think,

that's most exciting about the Bourne franchise

is that it's about a real man in a strong contemporary world,

with stories that feel like they're ripped out of tomorrow's headlines,

and so it seemed to me appropriate

to fill Bourne's dreams, his nightmares,

the fragments of his past that are visible to him,

with images that shock and disturb and feel like they're from today.

My argument is not with you.

SIX WEEKS LATER

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

There's no place it won't catch up to you.

It's how every story ends.

Tape recording, of course,

was the tape that Bourne sent to Pam Landy at the end of Bourne Supremacy.

And one of the difficult storytelling problems

that you have in a Bourne film, particularly in this film,

is to create a film that exists for an audience

and will be explicable and understandable for an audience

that's coming to only Bourne Ultimatum for the first time,

and yet feel satisfying to an audience

that has followed the trilogy from Bourne Identity through Bourne Supremacy

and onwards.

And a lot of discussion,

particularly in the editing room, around this scene,

which is essentially backstory.

We have to convey our backstory with maximum economy

and also establish, of course, the character of Landy,

who's very, very important in the Bourne trilogy, obviously,

as the character who pursues Bourne,

but also comes to understand what his real agenda is.

And that's what this scene's all about.

He's looking for something. Something in his past.

Maybe he hasn't found it yet and we need to know what it is.

Are you telling me he's not a threat to this agency?

I think if he wanted to hurt us, he could have sent the tape to CNN.

Maybe he still will.

Scott Glenn came in to play the part of CIA Director Kramer.

A very fine actor and a very, very good foil, I think, for Joan Allen.

Let's keep looking.

And, of course, it's often said that in a thriller,

the hero is only as good as the characters ranged against him,

and so it's very important that all the parts in a Bourne film are played with conviction.

So now we meet a young reporter, a British reporter, Simon Ross,

played by Paddy Considine.

To a mysterious meeting in a Turin café.

I wanted this meeting to remind us...

it certainly reminded me of the great 1970s movies,

particularly All the President's Men.

Great scenes between

Bob Woodward and Deep Throat in the underground car park.

I wanted it to have those echoes, but be a story for today.

This reporter, who's on the hunt for Jason Bourne,

in front of a source.

Will the source help? What does he know? What will he say?

And that's ultimately what drives the story of Bourne Ultimatum.

PARIS, FRANCE

Now we meet another character, Martin,

Marie's brother.

We learned of his existence, actually, in Bourne Identity

and I always assumed that if Bourne didn't know him,

that he knew of Bourne,

and that maybe Marie, his sister, had been in contact at some point.

And it gives a platform for some emotionality for Bourne.

We can reclaim the memory of Marie

and also understand

that the character of Bourne is made by his circumstances

rather than inborn.

Where is she?

She's dead.

She was killed.

I'm sorry.

In a way, this is quite a similar scene to the final scene in Supremacy,

when Bourne meets the young girl, Irena,

but, again, I thought that was helpful,

as I say, in balancing an audience that has followed the trilogy

through Identity and Supremacy,

that they'll reclaim the Bourne from the end of Supremacy

and take him forward into Bourne Ultimatum.

And for that audience that hadn't seen Supremacy,

the scene would sit as a very important indicator of Bourne's emotional state.

She was shot.

We were together in India.

He came for me.

You killed him?

Balancing backstory with forward momentum

in an action-adventure thriller is one of the most difficult things, I think.

How you get the story going.

And I would say in this film, probably,

more time was spent in the cutting room,

myself, Chris Rouse and the team

trying to get this film working swiftly,

but yet allowing the audience to gather the pieces that they need,

meet the characters that they need to know.

And it's very hard to get that balance right.

If you spend too much time setting things up,

your audience never forgive you

because they never quite exist at high tempo.

A film will always be slightly hampered by that,

but, on the other hand, if you go too quickly,

then the audience won't have absorbed what you need them to absorb

moving forward towards the climax.

- Sir! - What you got?

We intercepted a call in London. Keyword, "Blackbriar."

Okay, send it to New York right away.

So now we meet for the first time Noah Vosen,

played brilliantly by David Strathairn, I think.

David's an actor I've long admired,

obviously particularly in Good Night, and Good Luck,

but in many other films.

And when we were thinking about how to replace Brian Cox,

who obviously died at the end of Supremacy,

I wanted an actor with conviction

and the ability to frame a new kind of bad guy,

an intelligent mental master,

someone who could play chess with Bourne,

and that's what Vosen is.

Have you heard of an Operation Blackbriar?

You have details?

I also wanted to locate Vosen

at the heart of the, kind of, modern, technological CIA,

operating the full panoply of surveillance techniques,

in this case, ECHELON, which is a keyword-identifying program.

Our target is a British national, Simon Ross. A reporter.

I want all his phones, his BlackBerry, his apartment, his car,

bank accounts, credit cards, travel patterns.

I want to know what he's gonna think before he does.

Every dirty little secret he has.

I've always loved this scene 'cause it seemed to me

to dramatize and express all our worst, paranoid fantasies

about what goes on in secret, in our name, in these organizations.

And, of course, it builds up the bad guy nicely.

And now our story...

I think, at this point, we always felt, as we were cutting it,

this is really the moment when the story starts to bite,

when you realize that Bourne is after Ross and so is Vosen

but they have two very, very different agendas, obviously.

What?

Will you commit to this program?

This is the second flashback

that sets the scene for the mystery

that Bourne is gonna have to uncover about his past.

And already you can see in that flashback

that it's all going to be about what happened

when Bourne first joined the program.

"Will you commit to the program?" is the signpost.

What is it that happened when Bourne joined the program?

How did Jason Bourne become Jason Bourne?

What is the secret of Bourne's identity?

That's the question in Bourne's mind

as he powers through the countryside towards his meeting with Simon Ross.

Whatever that secret is,

we know from that flashback that it's cost him the life of Marie.

Copy that. Mr. Vosen, the subject is entering his office.

Give me some eyeballs on the street.

- Where's my picture, please? - Coming online.

Online now.

Jimmy, how you doing with the phone line?

Peter Wenham, who designed Bourne Ultimatum,

wanted, and I think rightly,

to give the hub a more striking, hi-tech look.

The hub in Bourne Identity was tucked away in a basement of the CIA.

The hub in Bourne Supremacy was an open-windowed office

10 floors up, above Berlin.

What we worked on for the hub in Ultimatum

was that it be in New York and, as it were, a technical upgrade,

capable of fielding all the vast array of surveillance equipment

that Noah Vosen has at his fingertips.

And, I think, the whole Waterloo sequence works

because it pits one man, Jason Bourne,

who has only his wits,

against the hi-tech reality of modern-day espionage.

Subject exiting the building.

And it makes for a great cat-and-mouse game

with an innocent, uncomprehending man in the middle,

the reporter, Simon Ross.

Mobile One should have him. Mobile One should have him.

Get Mobile One on it. Let me know when you hear it.

Hi. Waterloo Station, south entrance.

- Mr. Wills. - Where's he going?

Destination is Waterloo Station.

Okay, Waterloo Station.

Give me eyes at Waterloo. Put everyone in play.

- Let's activate the asset. - Mobilize Tracker Three.

Going into Bourne Ultimatum, I always wanted to set part of it in London.

That's because it's my city

and, also, it was the obvious choice

because it was the major Northern European city that Bourne had not yet operated in,

but there were personal reasons, too.

I've always felt that London, in big movies,

is too often presented to us as a land of Big Ben

and the Houses of Parliament, St Paul's and London buses,

and, you know, a tourist's London,

and that's not the world of Jason Bourne.

Jason Bourne lives in the cities that we all live in,

whether it's Paris or Berlin or Moscow or, in this case, London.

It's just an ordinary city.

And the Brit in me wanted to create

a bit of the Bourne thriller in my hometown.

There were other reasons, too, though, for choosing Waterloo

and that really goes to the heart

of what was going on with Bourne Ultimatum

in the preparation.

It always felt to me, when I first saw Doug Liman's Bourne Identity,

that it was a wonderful collision

between a mainstream Hollywood mentality and an indie mentality

and that's what made the Bourne franchise so fresh.

And it was that collision that I tried to keep alive

in Bourne Supremacy.

But the problem, coming into Bourne Ultimatum, of course,

is that by the time we sat down to start making the third in the trilogy,

the franchise, of course, by then, was very, very successful

and, clearly, Bourne Ultimatum was gonna be a very big movie

and I didn't want us to succumb to "big movie-itis,"

to move into town and create sanitized spaces,

put a picket fence around the unit,

and make our film cut off from everyday life,

because that's not where the Bourne franchise lives.

The Bourne franchise lives on the streets.

And so that really led me to set the action sequences in the film

in places where it was impossible for us to operate as a big unit.

So, for instance, Waterloo Station,

the crowded markets of Tangier and the streets of New York.

They're all places where no matter what resources you have as a movie,

you can't operate and cut yourselves off.

I mean, in Waterloo we were only able to have,

I think, 15 or 20 people on the station at any one time.

The unit had to be housed a mile or two away

and it forced us to be true to our roots, to operate like a guerrilla unit,

seizing the shots on the run in amongst everyday life,

the teeming reality of big cities.

And I think that gives this sequence its vitality,

because very often we were literally making it up as we go along

and grabbing shots as best we could in amongst the workings of the station.

Go! Let's go.

Oh, shit.

What the hell was that?

Sir, we've lost all communication with Mobile One.

So Bourne successfully gets Ross away from his hunters

but he knows he can only speak to him fleetingly

because Vosen will be on him.

Sir, asset's on scene.

And I love the contrast between Vosen furiously trying to find him

and Bourne grabbing his hurried moments with Ross,

and the whole orchestration, really, of the threat with Paz coming in.

Paz, of course, a new character.

In each of the films,

there's been a character who really has been Bourne's doppel.

It was Clive Owen, of course, in Bourne Identity

and then we had Kirill in Bourne Supremacy,

and now, Paz, played by Edgar Ramirez.

And they're very difficult parts to play,

because, of course, they're essentially dialogless parts.

He said that you were square one, the dirty little secret.

He said he knows who you are.

All right, we have to move.

So that's the first time that Bourne hears of Operation Blackbriar,

which was a code name that was thrown away at the end of Bourne Identity.

For eagle-eyed viewers of the trilogy,

they'll remember that when Brian Cox, Abbott,

went up to Capitol Hill to testify at the end of Bourne Identity,

he testified that Operation Treadstone had been closed down,

but he asked for funding for an unspecified operation, Blackbriar.

And in this film,

the story is going to center on what that Operation Blackbriar actually is.

And Bourne straightaway knows.

He can see straight off that it's Treadstone upgraded.

I'm gonna walk by you. I want you to move along the far wall

to your left in four, three, two, one.

Stand up.

That's it.

Where the hell is he?

We cannot afford to lose this guy, people.

There was an interesting example

of the way fact and fiction can work with each other.

When we were designing this sequence,

I wanted very much Vosen, in New York,

to be able to tap into the CCTV cameras at Waterloo

in order to track Bourne's progress,

but, of course, that was essentially a flight of fancy.

It was only when we went down to Waterloo

and actually visited the security operation there

that we realized it's actually something that could easily happen.

Hurry, Ross. We gotta move.

Okay, move through this crowd. Move through this crowd.

Get undercover right now. Move through this crowd.

The whole choreography of this sequence

was brilliantly executed, I think, by Christopher Rouse

and the editorial team.

It's a funny thing when you see these sequences

months after you've completed them, because you look at them and you think,

"Well, it could only be like that. Every shot has to be in that order."

But, of course,

when you're actually wrestling with a monstrous, great action sequence like this,

you watch them, literally, hundreds upon hundreds of times

in different ways, different orders, different pacing.

And I think it's in this sequence

that the whole issue of tempo starts to work for the film,

because we set the tempo so high from the off that here

it gets its payoff.

And tempo is a difficult beast in a film,

because you need tempo, but you have to have clarity.

Tempo without clarity is very, very unsatisfying.

Jesus Christ.

That's Jason Bourne.

He's picking us apart. Do you think he's the source?

He's gotta be.

So here is one of those examples of where you can vary the pace

and introduce clarity and detail

and then, when you pick it up again,

you feel like a tremendous surge of energy returns.

And varying pace,

and ensuring that you're developing at all times

character and narrative and action,

is at the heart of this kind of filmmaking, I think.

Listen to me! This isn't some story in a newspaper.

This is real. You understand me?

Okay.

Call all agents back.

Give Bourne's location at the back of the store to the asset.

The character of Jason Bourne, of course, has always had this antenna, this radar,

this ability to size up his situation

and sense danger.

It's just a casual look at two security men turning their backs,

a camera turning in the wrong direction.

- Bourne. - Wait. Something's not right.

And he knows that he's in a killing field.

And now all the threads of this long action sequence come together

because, finally, Paz is...

He's in play.

Ross is panicking.

And Bourne knows he has a body on his hands.

And now this long sequence that's been built up

from the moment Bourne got on the train to London from Paris

resolves itself in a headlong chase.

Bourne catches a glimpse of his doppel.

And this sequence, of course, has had...

It's got more than a wink

at probably the great action-adventure film of all time, French Connection,

one of my favorite films.

The wink gets a bit heavy at this point,

but it's good because it's Bourne face to face with his nemesis,

and the stage is set, then, of course, for the rest of the film.

We have a situation.

Yeah.

Director Kramer would like to see you.

- We need to get those warrants... - He said it's urgent.

The other interesting and infuriating thing when you make these kinds of thrillers

is that the pieces, the clues, if you like, that drive the narrative

are usually incredibly small and incredibly simple.

And often, when you're constructing them, they feel too simple

and often what you end up going for in preproduction

is something much more convoluted

and, very often, the task of making, certainly making the Bourne films,

is to take dense, complex, plotted storytelling

and distill it, boil it down,

bring it to its simplest core.

A source on the run.

A journalist murdered.

Bourne hunting the source and the bad guys, too.

And the clues that actually oil those wheels can be very simple,

because as long as the audience knows the paradigm of the story,

what's broadly driving it,

then they're content and happy to absorb the characters.

That's particularly true, I think, in this scene,

which I think is a wonderful scene between Joan and David

where you see a clash of temperaments

and a clash of approaches to intelligence work.

- Anything for you, ma'am? - Just coffee, please.

- Are you sure? I'm buying. - I'm good.

And you see this quality of intelligence at the heart of it all,

that these are people using their minds to fight each other and to fight Bourne.

And I think that's one of the crucial elements

of the success of the Bourne franchise, that it's not just action and brawn.

There's always a cool, smart factor at the heart of it

that sustains the franchise, keeps it going,

makes it endlessly rewarding to watch, I think.

Particularly, I think, and I would say that, I suppose, but on DVD...

I think that audiences come to these films on DVD

and see all sorts of layers of motivation and cleverness

that, perhaps, aren't immediately apparent when you see the film theatrically.

Bourne saw us coming. The question is what was he doing there?

No, the real question is how you managed

to get into a firefight at a public train station.

You know as well as I do decisions made in real time are never perfect.

Don't second-guess an operation from an armchair.

I'll see you at the office.

Enjoy your egg whites.

Here we are. Bourne arrives in Madrid.

It was always one of the elements of making Bourne Ultimatum.

I wanted to link London, Madrid and New York,

three cities that had their own experiences of paranoia

and fear in recent years.

If the Bourne franchise is about anything, it is about fear and paranoia,

and subtly, under the surface, it makes those cities

very good backdrops for a contemporary thriller.

Now, I want everyone to sit down, strap in and turn on all you've got.

That would mean now!

Thank you.

Give me a team deployment plan.

I want everything you got on Ross on screen one.

Landy is such a great character, I think, because she combines

a certain sort of ruthless realpolitik

with sympathetic understanding and almost compassion for Bourne.

She's never a sentimental character

and, also, she's always the smartest person in the room.

Found a round-trip ticket to Turin, Italy, yesterday.

0800 arrival, 1205 departure.

I think we can be pretty certain that Bourne's not your source, then.

How?

Ross's call to his editor where he said he'd just met the source

took place just after...

This scene was the brainchild of George Nolfi,

who was the principal writer on Bourne Ultimatum.

And it was George who came up with this idea

of demonstrating Landy's expertise,

that she would come into the hub, Vosen's world,

where we had already seen Vosen

with all his array of technological expertise at his fingertips,

and she would literally turn it on its head.

So, you got any better ideas?

Yeah, look at all the people whose cell phones...

That's a very, very clever scene

because it sells so many characters all at once.

Landy, the beginning of her fencing match with Vosen,

the way that the hub operates and its technological possibilities,

and also the characters of the two principal lieutenants.

Tom Cronin, who is Landy's number two,

very ably played by Tom Gallop, returning again from Bourne Supremacy,

and, also, Wills, who is Vosen's number two,

played very ably by Corey Johnson.

Neal Daniels.

- He's station chief in Madrid, isn't he? - Yeah.

All right, call the RSO at the embassy.

Have them take Daniels into custody, if he is there.

And, also, the scene drives us towards the source,

Neal Daniels.

If he is not the source,

then he is after the source, the same as we are.

Good thriller writing, and it's an incredibly rare skill,

is all about distilling what you know

and then moving it up to the next level

and continually turning the screw, piece by piece,

towards a final satisfying conclusion.

Three minutes to destination, sir.

And we were very lucky in Bourne Ultimatum,

all the Bourne films, to have wonderful, wonderful writers.

Tony Gilroy, obviously, who's been there from the beginning,

but also on this film, Scott Burns and George Nolfi.

Your mission will save American lives.

A vital moment now in the middle of the film,

where Bourne finds the photograph

and remembers the character of Hirsch, played by Albert Finney,

and finally remembers his maker,

the man who made him.

Of course, we're driving forward on that theme

of Bourne discovering the secret of his identity,

who made him and how he was made.

Sir, they're at the front door.

- Five seconds. - Put it up live.

This action sequence is all built on Bourne's ability

to improvise using everyday objects.

It's been a feature of the Bourne films since Bourne Identity,

when he picked up the ballpoint pen.

Bourne Supremacy, obviously, was the famous toaster,

and now we have another action sequence which turns on everyday objects.

- The safe is empty. - Shit.

Looks like he left in a hurry.

- Track Daniels' passports. - Stand by.

Making a sequence like this, of course, is...

You have to make choices.

Do you stay with Bourne and watch it unfold from Bourne's point of view

or do you, as in this case, stay with the hunters

and let Bourne drop out of the story?

And that's what we chose to do.

And always, in action sequences, you're trying to decide

"Which point of view is it better to go for?"

Suspense?

God damn it!

Or revelation?

Get me a secure line in there. Get the second team over there now!

For those people who saw Bourne Supremacy, obviously,

we've been here before.

I was posted here after Berlin.

Bourne and Nicky.

Where's Daniels?

Where is he?

I've always very much liked the character of Nicky

and felt that she had offered tremendous opportunities

for the Bourne franchise.

Ever since Julia Stiles brought the character in, in Identity.

It was quite a small part then, I think, rather undeveloped,

and I think she came much more into her own in Supremacy,

with those wonderful scenes in Berlin,

and I always wanted, in Bourne Ultimatum,

to explore the Bourne-Nicky relationship in more detail.

Nicky, I need to do an ID challenge.

Code in, Sparrow.

But, of course, to do that, it was critical to get the relationship

beyond the point at which Bourne was holding a gun to her.

Nicky, this is Noah Vosen.

That's really what this scene's all about.

I just walked in.

We have two officers on-site. Are you in contact with them?

They're down. Unconscious but alive.

- Any sign of Neal Daniels? - No.

Nicky, this is Pam Landy.

We have reason to believe there's a connection between

Neal Daniels and Jason Bourne.

Bourne? You're still looking for Bourne? I thought that case was closed.

No, some people are convinced...

You see these scenes put together...

It's an absolute testimony to the actors

that they flow together so effortlessly,

'cause, of course, all these scenes are shot

in different times, in different places, in different fragments,

often with additional photography in there, too,

and yet, always, the central believability or the conceit of the scene,

that they're all listening to each other, is entirely intact.

Backup will be arriving in approximately one hour.

It often doesn't feel like that when you're shooting them,

but that, in a sense, is the real challenge

for the actor in these films.

To maintain concentration and conviction

when fragments of story are coming to you...

My car's outside.

...in very, very difficult situations.

Somewhere, you have to play that little piece,

even though you may not know where it fits into the whole, with complete conviction.

I think it really shows through in that sequence.

All these actors, Matt, Julia, David and Joan,

all locked in together, with different agendas, in that phone call.

And, again, like any great action sequence,

it drives towards a payoff,

an action payoff.

...to a bank account in Tangier.

Right, that's 300 miles away. If we hurry, we can make the morning ferry.

Where are you parked?

To the right, 20 meters, north side of the street.

I like this scene 'cause there's always a...

In a Bourne film, you need just a small element of wit

at the back of it all.

Bourne films are never meant to be funny. They're never broad.

But I think you want to smile when you see how Bourne outwits them

and how simply he does it.

What the hell just happened?

We've lost visual contact with the subjects, sir.

Christ!

Issue a standing kill order on Jason Bourne, effective immediately.

Of course, now the scene is set

for the next confrontation between Vosen and Landy

as Bourne and Nicky make their getaway, en route to Daniels.

This is a very important scene in the film.

We actually shot it two or three times in two or three different ways,

a daylight scene, a night scene...

What's Operation Blackbriar?

...always trying to nail the same idea,

Vosen being forced by Landy to answer some questions,

because the audience, at this point, needs to know certain things

to keep going on the quest.

But, of course, we can't give so much away

that the rest of the story is redundant.

And you often find that with these kinds of thrillers,

that very often, they turn on a small number of scenes,

and those scenes you may shoot three or four times

because you're trying to get the exact right piece of the jigsaw.

It's got to be exactly right to fit

and sometimes you can shoot it one way and, tonally, it will be wrong

or it'll give away too much information, or maybe not enough.

And you're trying all the time to calibrate that absolutely perfectly

for the unfolding story.

In this scene, what you need to know is a glimpse of where Vosen's operation fits

in the overall world of paranoia.

What's the connection to Daniels?

He ran all of our operations in Southern Europe...

And, of course, what that does is enable us to elevate Daniels,

to give him some sense of identity.

This Deep Throat. Who is he? What does he know?

How far does his knowledge go?

And, of course, the more you can elevate that,

the higher the stakes in the film.

He's after Daniels for a reason.

Well, what does it matter what Bourne is after?

When we find Daniels, and, believe me, we'll find him...

And what you need to know is that Vosen is desperate to get him

and that Landy knows that she's on the trail of the truth,

but she's not yet got it, that Vosen is hiding something.

And, again, this is a very, very important scene for Bourne and for Nicky.

So you have these two scenes back-to-back, in the middle of the film,

which define a lot of the character in the film

on Bourne's side of the story and also on the Vosen and Landy side.

Do you know who that is?

That's Daniels.

This scene's a very clever scene, I think,

cleverly constructed.

He was there at the beginning.

It was actually the original idea of Tom Stoppard,

who was one of the writers on the film,

and we talked about how we could develop the Bourne-Nicky relationship

and he had this idea that you could create a scene where Bourne would realize

from what Nicky was saying that they had a past together

and that past would be ambiguous but meaningful.

And out of that idea... it went through various versions.

This was George Nolfi's version of that scene.

And I think it really plays.

Why are you helping me?

It's a difficult scene because it's got to develop

the idea of Hirsch and Bourne's past and what Bourne's agenda is

in pursuing this quest,

but it's also got to develop their past, Bourne and Nicky's past.

And I think it's beautifully played by both of them.

You really don't remember anything.

And, of course, ultimately, it's a scene about Bourne's memory,

what he can know and what he can't know.

And I love the fact that that ambiguous past is left hanging there,

explored and yet unexplored,

and there's enough of it to drive them forward together,

towards Tangier,

which is where the story next goes.

He's in Tangier.

Noah Vosen.

Great action scenes and great action thrillers,

I think, are all about setup.

You've got to take the time to set a sequence up

and that's what we're doing here.

And when you're sitting in a theater with an audience,

the audience knows that it's getting ready for the tempo to rise,

but, often, you can have a lot of enjoyment in holding that back,

as we're doing here,

signaling to the audience that it is going to come soon

but we're going to make you wait a little bit while we set it up.

And then...

You start.

Again, hold it back.

Set the scene.

First of all, establish a sense of place,

two characters on a mission to find a man, Daniels,

who Bourne believes can tell him the secret of his identity.

And then slowly choreograph the forces

ranged against them.

In this case, a new operative, Desh, who arrives in Tangier,

brought into play, obviously, by Vosen.

There are a lot of complex elements that have got to come into play here

before you can let rip.

All right, get an elevation and a floor plan, tic-tac-toe.

It was always my instinct, coming into Bourne Ultimatum,

to try and make the action sequences much, much longer

than they'd been in Bourne Supremacy. Much denser, richer and more complex,

and I think it's at the heart of why people enjoy the film,

because the tempo is high,

but the ride is sustained

and it's filled with this kind of texture and detail.

His location's being blocked by the firewall.

No, they found Daniels. They know where he is.

They'll get one of the operatives to terminate him.

Find out who.

Desh.

Tell him you're gonna meet him and you have a new phone for him.

If you stop Desh, they'll just get someone else.

No, we're not gonna stop him, we're gonna follow him.

Joey Ansah played Desh.

It was his first role

and I think he turned in a very strong performance.

Again, it's very, very hard to play these parts when you have no lines

and it's a tribute, when you can still follow a story...

A story's been sold to you, but through physical acting.

Tangier was a wonderful place to shoot.

We loved it, I think, again, because it's...

It's there, just in the margins in French Connection.

It's a wonderful location that throws back, I think, to the 1970s,

but also has a strong contemporary resonance.

We had a lot of fun there.

We practically closed the city down for weeks and weeks and weeks.

This, in fact, is one of the main intersections in Tangier.

Asset unscheduled stop.

Originally this scene was going to be in cars but we switched it

and made it Vespas, basically because

it was obvious, once we got to Tangier, that Bourne would never operate in a car.

In a landscape like Tangier

the quickest way to get around would be by motorbike

because the streets are so crowded.

South to Rue de Belgique, stationary Place de France.

That's where Parsons is.

When we're finished with Daniels, send the asset after her.

Yes, sir.

We find Parsons, we find Bourne.

Noah, what are you doing?

- Not now. - I wanna know what's going on.

I said not now!

What basis are you continuing this operation on?

The Vosen-Landy feud breaks out.

- She is up to her neck in this! - This is about Daniels, not Nicky!

- She has betrayed us. - You don't know the circumstances...

The differing philosophies, the personal chemistry finally boiling over.

And you had better get on board.

Noah, she's one of us.

And this, I think, is one of my favorite lines in the film.

It ends when we've won.

A great line for a bad guy.

Ruthless, definitive, and upping the stakes for what's gonna happen.

When we're finished with Daniels, send the asset after them.

Yes, sir.

- Okay, come on. - Stand by...

- Two minutes, sir. - Two minutes.

John Powell composed the score for Bourne Ultimatum.

Obviously he scored Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Identity.

Myself think that John Powell's Bourne music

is amongst the best action-adventure thriller music ever composed.

Much imitated, never surpassed, in my view.

I think what he did on this film,

particularly in view of the time constraints, was nothing less than extraordinary.

His music has a pulse

and an energy

and yet a lyrical quality

that defines Bourne, literally.

- On it, sir. - Two hundred meters.

Okay, come on, I want to lay in some preliminary tracking.

We love this little trick. it...

it throws Bourne onto the defensive.

Suddenly what we think was gonna happen doesn't

and Bourne is in mortal danger.

And it enables me to have a bit of fun winking back

at another great film, Battle of Algiers

and the famous café scene.

Sadly, Pontecorvo, the wonderful director of Battle of Algiers

passed away while we were shooting Bourne Ultimatum.

And we had a minute's silence on set in his memory.

One of the great directors of all time, in my view.

During the making of Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum

I was often asked, "How do you approach these big action sequences?"

And I would always answer,

"The first thing you do is phone a man called Dan Bradley,

"who's the best action-unit director in the business."

And he and I worked together very closely on Supremacy and on Ultimatum.

And here's another example of some of his brilliant work.

He has the ability to have ideas,

get some great action shots,

and he's an integral member of the Bourne team.

He shares with me, I think, just a thirst to be there when it happens,

to be in the middle of it rather than to watch it from the outside,

so you're not a spectator, you're immersed in it as a participant.

He also has a genius for coming up with the most outrageous shots

and being able to execute them.

It helps, of course, to have a stunt team of several hundreds

and we certainly used every one of them in this film.

So we reach the Tangier Medina

where we shot for what felt like months but probably was only several weeks.

When you direct a film like Bourne Ultimatum

one of the most extraordinary things, I think, when you make those films

is that you're surrounded by so many talented, committed people,

and here in this sequence, in the market,

I leaned very heavily on Chris Carreras, my first A.D.

who's responsible, basically, for marshalling a unit in small confined areas

where you can't control crowds,

where people are looking at the camera,

where you've gotta run complicated action sequences,

where there's safety issues,

where you've got to make sure that the camera unit can see the action.

It's an absolute creative and logistical nightmare.

And, again, like Dan Bradley,

Chris Carreras is one of the unsung heroes of Bourne Ultimatum.

This is one of my favorite bits of Bourne Ultimatum.

When you feel that, as a film, it's got more gears,

you're going through the gears, getting quicker and quicker,

and you feel it can do it as a film and sustain its energy,

it gives that wonderful feeling of running along a cliff.

It's just got a lot of energy.

To me, making a Bourne film

is a bit like taking a high performance car onto a racetrack.

You've got to drive it as fast as it can possibly go

but at a place where you still have perfect control of narrative character.

And where those two meet,

the forces of anarchy and the forces of control,

is where a Bourne film should sit.

And when you hit that sweet spot, as I think we do here,

the result is thrilling

because you know where everybody is,

you know where the police are, you know what Bourne's doing,

you know why he's picked up the towel.

You've got cause and effect, complex choreography,

a woman in danger,

Bourne riding to the rescue.

And the ability to vary pace.

Now it slows down again and you get a different texture,

stairs, interiors, cat-and-mouse, deadly cat-and-mouse.

It's great fun shooting this stuff

because all the time you're trying to make choices based on the physical environment.

The idea for the towels on the glass

was one that came up literally as we were shooting it.

Now we pick the pace up again.

I think the sound mix, which I think was brilliant in Bourne Ultimatum...

But I think it comes into its own in the Tangier sequence

because you can feel all the texture of a real city,

all the detail of doors and sounds

and space. Menace.

We used to call this "the haunted-house sequence."

Often you find with these action sequences that you're playing around

with classic thriller paradigms.

The trick is to try and take those paradigms and do something interesting with them.

This case, here's the woman in the haunted house pursued by the killer

and Bourne has got to take the straightest route

and the straightest route is not over the roofs.

It's straight through people's apartments, in and out of everyday lives,

as he races to try and get there before it's too late.

And, of course, in doing so,

he's trying to redeem his failure to save Marie in Bourne Supremacy.

This time, he gets there in time.

That was one of Dan Bradley's great ideas,

that you could create a shot coming down into the window

where literally the cameraman would jump with the character,

and that's what we did. it was a...

And it's a great cinematic moment.

The fights, of course, are staple ingredients of the Bourne franchise.

Each one, I think, has been powerful.

They're essentially ballets, violent ballets.

They look real but, of course, in fact,

they're rehearsed endlessly

to get this amount of detail.

So each move has got a purpose,

each move is counted, cause and effect,

and yet still have a sprawling quality that makes it feel violent and real.

I'm not a great fan of designer violence myself.

I think violence is desperate and brutal, ugly,

and it's essential that Bourne discovers that in each film.

His destiny as a character

is to be put into the dark place,

to become a killer against his will

and to feel that sense of shame.

It's essential to our understanding of the character.

Code it in. We need to be dead.

Sir? Asset confirms both targets are down.

And, of course, very important, I think, in action sequences,

that not only must you spend time setting them up

and then choreograph them

with complexity and pace and variety,

but, I think, as important also is that when they end

they take the character to a new level.

Action has got to deliver character for it to really work, I think,

and in that case, in the whole Tangier sequence,

it delivers Bourne that moment of shame.

Just remember why we put Landy there.

If Blackbriar goes south, we'll roll it up, hang it around her neck and start over.

One of the interesting things making Bourne Ultimatum

and looking back at Supremacy and to a lesser extent Identity,

Doug Liman's film,

was to see the way Matt himself had changed

over the five or six years of the franchise

as Bourne had become tempered.

The Bourne of Bourne Ultimatum

is a character who knows so much more, who's seen so much more

than the Bourne who's pulled out of the water

at the beginning of Bourne Identity

and I think Matt played that

tempered Bourne in this film to perfection.

I just don't know their names.

And, I think, by this stage in the film you can see

the breadth of acting required to carry one of these films.

What Matt brings to that character is this quality of truthful acting.

...help me remember the names.

He has that ability in those small number of scenes

to bring us to the heart of the character of Bourne

trapped in a cycle of violence,

with great truthfulness and restraint, I think.

And then ally that to the extraordinary range of physical acting

that the part of Jason Bourne requires,

the running, the jumping, the fighting, the driving,

and it's that range of acting skills that he brings to the part

that I think really is the reason why the franchise works.

You know, I've said it before and I believe it to be true.

I think that he has, in the Bourne franchise,

redefined how we understand the action-adventure hero

for a new century.

I think he stripped out all the macho, gun-toting,

conventional clichés of the action-adventure hero

and brought instead a quality of humanity, a quality of truthfulness,

still married to the brilliant action-adventure elements that you have to have

and, in doing so, he's created a new kind of hero,

one that speaks to our times.

A human being, a character with heart and soul,

a rather moral character, I think, Jason Bourne is,

because he searches for truth in a corrupt world

and is destined to be alone.

And, of course, he feels the pain of loss.

And in those small moments of humanity the character is brought to us.

We relate to Jason Bourne.

And I think that when people look back on this trilogy of films,

as I'm sure they will,

I think they will look at Matt's performances as Jason Bourne

and see that they give a very real insight

into the temperature of our culture

in the six years since 2001 .

He has created that absolutely hardest thing of all,

an iconic character who exists beyond us.

We all know of Jason Bourne and we all think of Matt when we hear the name.

And that is a testament to his achievement.

It gets easier.

These are Mr. Daniels' belongings.

It's everything?

Yes.

Let's see that.

The idea for bringing Jason Bourne back to New York was Tony Gilroy's.

Station chief in Rabat just called.

They found a body.

- Bourne? - Desh.

In a sense it means that the story is about Bourne coming home.

And Tony had this idea

that you could create the Bourne Ultimatum

where the first two acts took place between the last two scenes of Bourne Supremacy.

And so you would come to the last scene of Bourne Supremacy,

the phone call between Bourne and Landy that we remember from that film,

and you would understand it in a different way in Bourne Ultimatum.

It would replay in a different way.

And it was a great idea.

And, again, it's all about choreographing the pieces,

bringing all the pieces on the checkboard together

in order to create the third act and the final act in the Bourne trilogy

on the streets of New York.

Gilberto de Piento. Gilberto de Piento.

Your party is waiting for you.

It's interesting. When we made the film we were obsessed

with the idea that audiences would struggle

with the idea that they were going to see a scene from Bourne Supremacy

played in a different way.

We were concerned that audiences wouldn't understand

or would reject it.

In point of fact, it was never an issue.

Small example of the visual effects in Bourne Ultimatum.

Pamela Landy.

Peter Chiang, our visual effects supervisor I've worked with on a number of occasions,

knows that I like visual effects to be very subtle,

almost a last-resort option rather than a first

because I think that one of the things that distinguishes a Bourne film

is that it is as you see it.

It's not a greenscreen construct.

But there are visual effects and they have to be done

and he does them with great subtlety, I think, and skill.

Is that official?

No. Off the record. You know how it is.

- You tracing this? - Fifty seconds to trace.

- Goodbye. - Wait. Wait.

David Webb. That's your real name.

You were born 4/1 5/71 in Nixa, Missouri.

Why don't you come in and we'll talk about it?

Something is very wrong here.

So now we get the answer to the question that was my first question, really,

when I rewatched Supremacy before I started Ultimatum.

When I rewatched it

and you got to that phone call between Bourne and Landy, it was obvious.

The question was, why did Bourne come to New York just to phone her

when he was a couple of hundred yards away from her?

There must have been a reason why he did that. What was that reason?

What was he doing? What did she think he was doing?

And now you get the answer.

He was sending her a message and so was she.

Landy just left the building!

And Vosen realizes it.

And now the scene is set for the final adventure.

She's using her cell. There's an incoming text.

- Get it. - Working on it, sir.

How many do we have on Landy?

One of the realities of shooting a film like Bourne Ultimatum is the sheerscale of it,

as a production, means that you'll be shooting across seasons.

We started shooting in October

and we were still shooting in May,

the following year.

What that means is that you're trying to create an even palette

when, in fact, the material you've gathered

from very different times and very different weather conditions.

And it's never more apparent than in this sequence,

where we began shooting in New York in the middle of a blizzard

and we ended up shooting in the height of summer.

And it meant that Peter Wenham, the designer,

and Oliver Wood, our cinematographer, had to use all their ingenuity

to ensure that you couldn't tell the difference.

He's trapping himself.

It's a bad place to meet. It's too exposed.

He wouldn't have chosen it if he didn't have a reason.

Subject is en route.

Roof 43, let me know when you have visual.

Roof 43, standing by.

Standing by.

Okay, folks, here we go. Box 200 meters.

Visual on leader.

43 ground in position.

As soon as you have eyes on Landy, I wanna know.

This is one of the great moments, I think, in Bourne Ultimatum.

Okay, here we go.

Copy that. I see her.

The stage is set. Vosen is waiting for Bourne to show up.

You know something's gonna happen.

Make them wait.

Any sign of Bourne?

Negative.

No sign of target.

Noah Vosen.

This is Jason Bourne.

Audiences love this in theaters.

How did you get this number?

You didn't actually think I was coming to Tudor City, did you?

It always got a big laugh.

No, I guess not.

But if it's me you want to talk to, perhaps we can arrange a meet.

Where are you now?

I'm sitting in my office.

I doubt that.

And why would you doubt that?

If you were in your office right now,

we'd be having this conversation face to face.

Noah Vosen.

This is a code ten abort.

I want everyone back in the vehicles. This is a code ten abort.

Let's go! Let's go!

Now the chase begins again.

Now Bourne has got the truth about Blackbriar.

Bigger, better, more dangerous than ever.

Unaccountable secret power out of control.

- Yeah? - Wills, check my office.

And Vosen knows Bourne's got the secret.

We need building security up here.

- He's got everything. - God damn it!

All right, set a four-block perimeter around the building.

Somebody give me a visual.

I want the entire building searched.

Every room, every hallway, every closet, every goddamn air duct.

You understand? I want him found!

What just happened?

The action in New York becomes more and more car-based.

Where to?

Because, of course, we're moving towards the car chase.

Four-fifteen-seventy-one?

Always one of my favorite moments in a Bourne film.

When Matt and I first talked about Bourne Ultimatum,

it was the first thing we discussed, really.

We had to dare to come back to New York, where French Connection was shot,

and see if we could give a good account of ourselves,

30 years on.

North on Eighth.

And that, I think, more than anything else, spurred us on.

He's headed east in the Port Authority.

We had to prove that we could be as good, if we could.

Right there!

Mind you, New York is a ferociously hard city

to shoot any kind of car chase in.

In Supremacy, Moscow was a city of wide boulevards

and you can create great speed. But New York, of course, is built up,

streets very dense with traffic.

And so we went for a different kind of texture,

much more percussive, much more of a pinball-machine ride.

Much less about speed and much more about obstruction.

- Police! Freeze! - Put your hands in the air!

And we had to decide what vehicle Bourne would be driving.

Of course, in Supremacy he drove the yellow taxi, the Russian taxi,

but what better car to drive in New York? What car would give Bourne an edge?

The answer, a police car,

to enable him to monitor the environment around him

and to use his siren.

It's a smart choice, but an exciting one.

Take a look at this! Bourne's birthday, sir.

- What about it? - Check that out.

Sir, Landy told Bourne that his birthday was 4/1 5/71.

Oh, my God. It's a code.

Everything stops. Everything stops! Listen up!

4/1 5/71 . New assignment, numbers.

- What does it mean? - Give me encryption codes!

Sir, if you plug them in as variables of longitude and latitude

you get Cameroon.

41571 is the zip code for Varney, Kentucky.

- What date did she give him? - 4/1 5/71.

I don't believe it.

SRD is at 415 East 71 st Street.

- She just gave him the training facility. - Oh, Christ.

Bring all the teams in behind us.

Like any good thriller, you need a final act reveal

and in Bourne Ultimatum's case it's Bourne moving towards his maker

and discovering that his maker is located

at the Treadstone/Blackbriar research training facility,

in a downtown Manhattan hospital.

But to get there, he's got to run the gauntlet of metal.

You can feel, here,

that percussive stop-start tempo

that I think is much more credible and realistic for a chase in New York.

Only Dan Bradley could execute a stunt like that

and leave a car like that still rolling.

And, of course, you have to have a final coup de théâtre.

You have to have a crowd-pleasing, shameless final moment

in any action-adventure film

and here's ours.

- Hurry up! Somebody call 911! - Help him!

Magnificent. A great stunt, brilliantly executed.

Over in seconds, of course, in the theater,

but months and months of planning.

Hundreds and hundreds of people involved to execute something like that safely.

The asset lost Bourne. We lost him.

- Hello? - Albert, it's Vosen.

Bourne knows everything and he's on his way to you right now.

He's coming home, Noah.

- How long do I have? - I don't know.

Just get the hell out of there.

No, I'm gonna stay.

Like most British directors,

Albert Finney is one of my acting heroes.

As a kid, I can remember watching those great films from the '60s

where he was a powerful actor who defined a new Britain.

Of course, now he's an enduring movie star,

and when casting the role of Hirsch, we needed somebody with stature,

someone who, when Bourne finally got there,

after this three-film quest to find his maker,

you would know was worthy of his attention.

What better actor than Albert Finney?

They'll kill you for giving me this.

4/1 5/71 isn't much of a code.

My guess is Vosen is on his way already.

And this is a very important scene, of course, because this is the only scene

that Bourne and Landy have together, face to face.

After two films of speaking to each other, dealing with each other,

talking to each other across a divide,

and finally they realize they're on the same side.

David.

They speak for a better way,

a truer, more moral future.

This is where it started for me. This is where it ends.

That's, of course, assuming they can survive.

That's Landy.

Mandy Aaron, dial extension 200, please. Mandy Aaron, dial extension 200.

All right, lock this building down. Set a secure perimeter of one block.

Hello. This is Pamela Landy. I have to send a classified document.

Get a team to SRD after Bourne.

And put someone in every public area of this hospital.

Okay. Elevator shafts, service entrances, go!

I love the pace at this point of the film

because a lot of complex storytelling is being delivered

with great economy, I think.

We've got the logistical issues of where people are going.

You've got the fact that Landy is revealing the truth

of the Blackbriar program via a secure fax.

Bourne, en route to meet his maker.

Vosen, having to decide where he goes, where he splits his forces.

I'll take Landy on my own.

And somehow, and it's the problem of resolving all action-adventure thrillers,

the trick is resolving all the various characters,

all the various storylines, in a way that feels satisfying to the audience

and yet leaves time for the central payoff,

for the central character to come to fruition.

It's a bit like the reverse problem of starting a thriller.

If starting a thriller is the problem

of pushing a football team through a small doorway,

the end of the thriller is the reverse problem of getting them out the door again,

leaving only the hero.

A republic lives on the knife's edge.

It was always clear to me with Bourne Ultimatum

that, as a film, it had to provide answers.

I think Bourne Identity and Bourne Supremacy

were films driven essentially by questions.

"Who am I? What did I do? Why are people trying to kill me?"

Jason.

Bourne Ultimatum couldn't sustain on questions alone.

It had to provide the answers.

Bourne, in this film,

has got to realize and discover his identity

and he's got to realize, in particular,

that his identity is not just a matter of his name.

It's a question of his moral identity. What kind of a man was he?

Was he always a killer? Or did they turn him into a killer?

And those answers have got to be original and compelling

and consistent with the first two films.

And that was the great challenge of this final scene,

where all the elements of Bourne's past and present

come together to one single, dramatic confrontation.

Captain Webb.

Good morning, Captain.

You came in here.

You didn't even blink, Jason.

You just handed me these.

Has everything been explained to you?

Yes, sir.

You said you wanted to serve.

- Your missions will save American lives. - I understand, sir.

It's a very interesting journey, this climactic scene in Bourne Ultimatum.

It began as a sketched idea

by Tony Gilroy.

It was then developed by Paul Attanasio,

who did some work on this scene

and some others,

into a fuller confrontation.

And then developed further by George Nolfi.

And, ultimately, it took its final shape in the cutting room,

Chris Rouse and I finally pinning it down

and trying to bring all those threads together.

You haven't slept for a long time, David.

Have you made a decision?

This can't go on.

You have to decide.

- Who is he? - We've been through that.

What did he do?

It doesn't matter.

You came to us.

You volunteered.

The answers that Bourne seeks

can't be consoling, it seems to me.

You're not a liar, are you?

He's a character with a dark past,

but with a redeemed future.

But in seeking to confront his past,

he can't avoid responsibility for what he's done,

and I think it's at the core of the heroism and the morality of the character

that he successfully does see what happened

and that what happened doesn't sentimentalise him

or duck his responsibility.

I think it's part of what makes the Bourne films unique and original,

that they're prepared to go to the dark places

and, from them,

find a sense of redemption,

an emotionality, a truthfulness, a way forward.

Welcome to the program.

And it depends on acting of the highest caliber to pull it off.

Do you remember now?

I remember.

I remember everything.

I'm no longer Jason Bourne.

So now you're gonna kill me.

No.

You don't deserve the star they'd give you on the wall at Langley.

But you always have to have one piece more in a really rewarding thriller.

He's headed for the roof!

Bourne's character is resolved. He has renounced the past.

He is no longer Jason Bourne.

He's discovered the truth.

But of course, there is still one unresolved issue.

Paz, his doppel,

who has tracked him through the film

and who, in many ways, in various different guises, has tracked him through the trilogy.

The Professor and Kirill, and now Paz.

Why didn't you take the shot?

This was a scene that Frank Marshall, who has produced all three of the films,

always argued for, and he was quite right.

You need to have this final encounter

for the trilogy, for this film, to be truly satisfying.

And, of course, Bourne's use of words hearkens back to the confrontation

he had with the Professor, Clive Owen in Bourne Identity,

where the roles were reversed and Bourne was holding the gun

and the Professor was on the ground.

Now he's come full circle. The young gunslinger has become the old

and Jason Bourne returns to the water.

This is where he was found at the very beginning of the trilogy,

at the very beginning of Bourne Identity.

He was a dark floating body, wounded...

Good morning, senators.

If I may, I'd like to begin by making a statement for the record.

...his past and future uncertain.

The file indicates that Ezra Kramer authorized six illegal...

The President convened an emergency cabinet meeting today

to discuss the growing scandal

over an alleged government assassination program.

And I always wanted to return Bourne

back to that state, as the walls of Jericho crumbled.

Walls of Langley's Jericho, if you like, crumbled.

Two agency officials have already been arrested.

As the temples of the CIA crumble

and Vosen and Kramer and Hirsch are arrested.

I wanted this simple floating body.

Meanwhile, mystery surrounds the fate of David Webb...

Watched by Nicky.

She, free, of course.

It's been reported that Webb was shot and fell from a Manhattan rooftop...

Or not.

However, after a three-day search, Webb's body has yet to be found.

But then, because it's a Bourne movie,

you have to know he gets away,

because he's Jason Bourne.

He's the spirit of opposition.

I want him to survive

because you never know, we might need him one day.

And that sense of hope and optimism

and energy is what Moby gives us.

It's become the theme song of a Bourne film.

He remixed it for us.

It was a great, fun, fun film to make, hard, but fun,

and it was a great privilege to make it, too.