My Favourite Film Ending: The Bourne Supremacy

“Get some rest, Pam, you look tired,” Jason Bourne comments, casually, revealing he has been watching CIA agent Pam Landy from afar for the entire length of their climatic phone conversation. She turns to face the window behind her, startled, as Moby’s “Extreme Ways” is deployed on the soundtrack – an all-time great cinematic needle drop.

The Bourne Supremacy’s ending packs in so much in such a short space of time that it’s hard to know where to begin. It’s a triumphant victory for Matt Damon’s now iconic hero that not only re-confirms him as a singular badass, but also reveals a vital piece of plot to tide audiences over until The Bourne Ultimatum would arrive three years later.

After seemingly escaping the CIA’s assassins and machinations at the end of The Bourne Identity, Bourne is violently pulled back into a world of espionage and conspiracy in its sequel. He’s hunted by shadowy forces whilst trying to unravel the mystery of both his own identity and the Treadstone program that created him. By the end, he’s done enough damage that the CIA have to meet him on his terms. They’re so desperate to bring him in that when he makes his call to Landy, asking why he’s still being chased, she gives up his true identity in an attempt to win him over. Instead of falling for this obvious bait, Bourne delivers his now iconic quip before disappearing into a bustling crowd of New Yorkers.

It's a relentless film, opening as it does with Bourne’s beau Marie being unceremoniously shot by a sniper before careening the spy around Europe through brutal fights and breathless car chases. Greengrass’s brilliant action and pacing leaves you exhausted; the masterstroke of the ending is that it provides one last thrill whilst simultaneously providing a mighty sense of relief. Bourne spends a lot of Supremacy on the back foot, but this moment gives him a chance to turn the tables and take control.

This ending is also a fascinating case study in how blockbuster serialising has changed in recent years. Supremacy’s final scene actually takes place quite a ways in to the story of Ultimatum, which picks up after Bourne staggers away, bloodied and bruised, from the crunching car chase that left his hunter, and Marie’s murderer, Kirill, dying in the wreckage. Cut to a decade later and we’re all fully in the sway of the MCU storytelling style, when the most exciting sting is saved for the credits. This is the exact sort of scene that would nowadays be saved for when most people have left the theatre, but its inclusion in the main body of the film is the right choice, elevating an already near-perfect action tentpole.

Thankfully, Ultimatum lived up to all the promise implied by Supremacy’s ending, with Bourne’s cat-and-mouse chase with the CIA in New York just as clever and satisfying as it is in this truncated extract. In bringing Bourne to his home turf and taking the fight directly to the CIA after two films that kept him trapped in Europe, the ending of Supremacy marked a major progression of the story, and a commitment to ending it in a satisfying and complete way.

Every middle chapter of a saga is going to, in one way or another, find itself defined by its ending. It has to set up the grand finale by putting all the ducks in a row for the ultimate showdown, whatever form that takes. A brilliant film in its own right, The Bourne Supremacy’s ending fully leans into the film’s status as “part two of three” without feeling like it’s saving any of its best stuff for next time. It’s a masterclass in how to set up a sequel and the most cathartic ending to a film I’ve ever experienced.