< Back to BigPictureBigSound.com
The Bourne Trilogy on Blu-ray Disc
By Brandon A. DuHamel
2009-01-26 00:06:46
The Films
Who is Jason Bourne? The first answer to that question is that Jason Bourne is the brainchild of the former theatre actor turned author Robert Ludlum whose character Jason Bourne first appeared on screen in the 1980's in a television mini-series starring Richard Chamberlain in the lead role. Ludlum spent much of his years as an author struggling to gain critical acceptance for his popular spy novels and was often compared to other authors of the same ilk such as John Le Carré in an unfavorable light.
By 2002, however, Ludlum's fortunes had changed and young authors were now being compared to him. Producers saw this as an opportunity to capitalize on the success of the author's popular trilogy of spy thrillers, The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum. The author himself had often wanted to return to the stories and do them better justice in bringing them to the screen than he felt the earlier television adaptation had done.
 |
Which brings us to the second answer to the question posed, "Who is Jason Bourne?" Jason Bourne is a CIA agent, part of a covert experimental program to build the perfect assassin. During his first real mission, Bourne, played in the films by Matt Damon, fails to eliminate his target and awakens with a case of amnesia to find the agency that trained him now trying to kill him.
In an effort to find his true identity and figure out how he can do so many things, like fight off multiple people at once without breaking a sweat and use weapons he can't remember ever having held in his hands before, he makes his way to Berlin to check a security deposit account under what he believes to be his name. There he inveigles a civilian woman, Marie (Franka Potente) into helping him discover his identity and escape from the government assassins trying to terminate him. Thus begins the saga of Jason Bourne in The Bourne Identity and the story follows through nicely in a tightly woven arc straight through The Bourne Supremacy to The Bourne Ultimatum.
The Bourne films, unlike their 007 brethren, rely far more on story and situation to drive the plot than special effects and gadgetry and these stories never slow down enough to become stagnant. Bourne is always moving forward, realistically and believably.
Has the Bourne series redefined the spy thriller? Quite possibly, it has. Even last year's big Bond film, Quantum of Solace was heavily noted for owing much of its style to the Bourne films. The screen adaptations of Ludlum's CIA agent gone rogue also forgo the requisite explosion every several seconds that we find in most action films and rely less heavily on CGI and more on practical special effects grounding them in the real world. People can watch them and think, "Yeah, that really could happen."
None of that is to say that Bourne does not, naturally, owe a debt to the mighty 007. There are many similarities between the two -- the car chases, the globetrotting, the actual on-location filming employed by the producers. All of these things that make the Bourne films captivating to watch have all been pioneered by the Bond camp. Bourne with Matt Damon in the lead, however, brings a modern, everyman feel to the world of the spy thriller that makes it more palatable to a broader audience and employs a sense of realism.
For alternate views on Bourne, see our resident film guru Joe Lozito's theatrical reviews of The Bourne Ultimatum and The Bourne Supremacy.
The Picture
All three films in the collection come with 1080p/24 VC-1 high definition encodings that look superb and show no evidence of compression artifacts. Although it is oldest, Bourne Identity looks the best with the cleanest looking image, sharpest detail and best shadow detail. Supremacy suffers slightly from black crush but overall is again a solid transfer and displays all the same strengths as Identity, such as natural flesh tones, good contrast and no artifacts. Ultimatum is also a solid effort, looking nearly as good as Identity, but with deeper blacks and some occasional softness. Overall these are excellent looking transfers for these sorts of films. They perfectly render the moody look of Berlin and Moscow in the winter, the shadowy streets and dark corners that a spy thriller needs. This is reference material all the way.
The Sound
Each film in the Bourne Trilogy collection is given the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless treatment in addition to French and Spanish DTS 5.1 dubs. From the opening Universal logo of The Bourne Identity, the DTS-HD MA mix declares itself as an aggressive sound mix that will demand to be reckoned with from your ears and your sound system. Ambience drips from the rear speakers, the film's score is discretely mixed into all six channels, and the LFE pounds. Dialogue is intelligible and unsullied, never getting lost in the mix. Engines roar, guns pop with authority and punches land with appropriate thuds from any and every direction. The front three channels are very effectively utilized to follow action on screen as well. Just as the films go, the sound mixes are completely entertaining and fitting for films such as these.
The Extras
Fittingly for a collection of this stature, The Bourne Trilogy comes loaded down with an abundance of supplemental materials adding much value to the set. One downside to the video extras offered up by Universal on these discs is that they are all in standard definition, which is quite disappointing. Bourne fans can still rejoice, however, at the plethora of behind-the-scenes looks and interactive features included with this collection. Each disc has also been authored with BD-Live features, but none of them were active at the time of this review.
The extras available in this set are:
- The Bourne Identity:
- The Ludlum Identity (4:3/"windowboxed"/standard definition) -- This is a brief documentary about Robert Ludlum, the late actor turned writer and author of the Bourne trilogy of books among others.
- The Ludlum Supremacy (4:3/"windowboxed"/standard definition) -- This featurette is all about how Ludlum developed the Jason Bourne character and his inspiration for writing the novels.
