The Bourne Ultimatum

Third in the series. You know the drill. If you didn't like the first two, why would you go see the third?

Okay, The Bourne Ultimatum. Third movie about the rogue assassin Jason Bourne, based upon The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum. I stress that The Bourne Ultimatum isn't based upon the book of the same name (and neither was The Bourne Supremacy based upon the second book in the series), because the first movie departed so radically from the book's storyline that the second and third installments just wouldn't have made sense as written.

I loved the books. The books are incredible. The films, though different in many ways, are almost as good.

There is, as with the first two, one flaw. Shakicam. It's like the opposite of Steadicam. It's where many scenes are shot from a shaking camera, as though filmed by an amateur using a hand-held whilst sitting on a massage chair. I guess there's supposed to be some aspect of this that lends gritty realism to the movie that I am simply too unsophisticated to grasp, in my ignorance of the director's art, but it annoys the hell out of me. If I wanted to see the action wobbling all over the place I'd consume a bottle of fine Scotch before watching, and have a much more pleasurable experience for it.

Seriously, it's not big and it's not clever. Hold the bloody camera steady.

The movie itself is excellent. The storyline is gripping, the action is thrilling, and Matt Damon as Jason Bourne is as violently endearing as ever. The movie is a fitting continuation of the Bourne narrative.

Oh. Continuation? Yeah, there's a fourth and fifth book - The Bourne Legacy and The Bourne Betrayal - so it's even money that there may be one more film at least. I haven't read, nor do I have plans to read, these new books because they are not written by Ludlum, but by Eric Van Lustbader, and such projects are, in my experience, invariably disappointing.

This movie is, though, worth your time.

Doombreed Rating: * * * *