The Bourne Ultimatum Movie Review

The Bourne Ultimatum is the third installment the Bourne franchise, following Jason Bourne on his quest to finally discover his true identity. By now, everyone knows that's just the loose plot line that lends itself to lots of action, but they stick to it anyways. Paul Greengrass is back in the directors chair, and of course, Matt Damon is back as Jason Bourne.

I hadn't heard or read much about it before I saw it, but I had seen the previous 2 Bourne movies, so I had an idea of what to expect. I can't say I was a huge fan of the first 2. They were pretty good, but they weren't all that memorable. Personally, I didn't think the movies did a great job setting up the story, or the character of Jason Bourne for that matter, so I didn't really buy into the storylines or Matt Damon.

However, this third and final movie of the trilogy made up for all my doubts. I felt like this movie really embraced what it was, and used its strengths to build the story, and not the other way around. The action scenes were the best part, by far, but the most surprising part was the performance from Matt Damon as Bourne. He finally sold me as an action star. One of the best action/chase scenes I've seen since the opening scene in Casino Royale, maybe even better, ends up with a fight between Bourne and another guy, and throughout the scene, Damon is the one doing a lot of the actual fighting. And holy crap the fight was good.

Now, while everyone will tell you that the shaky cam is used too much in this movie, and it was used a lot, I think it was used well, because it was used the whole time to build a sense of tension, one thing these movies have always been good at, and it wasn't used to cover up anything. By that I mean, they didn't try to hide poor action scenes by using a shaky cam, in stead, they showed everything.

Finally, for the loose plot, I bought into it for 2 reasons. 1) It took a backseat to the very well done and intelligent action, as I said before, and 2) because it had very strong actors in the supporting roles, and the way they wrote the dialogue between those characters and Bourne was intelligently stupid, by which I mean they were good at writing smart characters into stupid situations that were fun when Bourne took advantage of them.

Overall, it is a very intelligent action movie, the best of the trilogy and one of the best of the year, and it is definitely worth the price of admission.

On the Reganometer, I give this movie a 9 out of 10.