The Bourne Ultimatum

It’s certainly worth noting that The Bourne Ultimatum – hot on the heels of such underwhelming actioners as Live Free or Die Hard and Transformers – comes off as nothing less than a breath of fresh air, and while Paul Greengrass’ expectedly kinetic camerawork occasionally borders on distracting, the film is generally one of the most exciting and thoroughly compelling thrillers to emerge in quite some time. The bare-bones storyline, which follows Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne as he continues to unlock clues surrounding his identity, is essentially just a springboard for a series of genuinely thrilling action sequences, with a pursuit through a busy train station and a chase on Moroccan rooftops the film’s obvious highlights. (A climactic car chase is rendered almost unintelligible by Greengrass’ jittery shenanigans, however.) Damon continues to be the series’ most potent weapon, as the actor effectively sustains the viewer’s interest even through the movie’s sporadically confusing expository passages. And although the structure employed by screenwriters Tony Gilroy and George Nolfi does become awfully repetitive (Bourne tracks down a lead and travels to a new country, where he must subsequently escape the clutches of the CIA, etc, etc), The Bourne Ultimatum‘s positive attributes, of which there are many, effortlessly outweigh its few negatives.

*** out of ****