Bourne again

I went to see The Bourne Ultimatum today. I'm a fan of the series. I enjoyed The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy. I think Matt Damon is the thinking woman's action hero. So when the critics called it a "thrill a minute" ride, I thought I'm in. Jason Bourne is an amnesiac assassin, trained by the government to kill, but with no memory of how, why or who he really is. He spends the three films evading government agents and piecing together the puzzle of who he was before he was Bourne.

In the first couple of movies this made for great drama. The chases are fast and the action furious. I have a few gripes with the third movie though. First, this CIA conspiracy thing is getting a little stale. So is the writing. I think I heard them say "Get eyes on that" (meaning turn the surveillance camera) about 200 times in the first 20 minutes of the film. They also "lock things down" a lot, buildings, city blocks, you name it. Now most of us know in these post 9/11 days just how hard it is to search a crowd of people or find a moving target, so all of this "locking things down" seems a little ridiculous. Finally there is a very tense chase scene where an agent marked for assassination is pursued through the back streets in Morocco. Rather than grabbing a hijab and taking off their coat, they proceed to run ahead sticking out like a sore thumb. This would never happen on Alias. I'm just saying, an agent at that level would know how to change their looks. Keanu Reeves did a better job of it in Johnny Mnemonic for crying out loud.

That said, this movie probably contains some of the best car chases you've ever seen. I think the guy who worked on Live Free Die Hard was definitely hired to work on this film. Bourne has attained an almost super human ability to avoid being killed. He always see things coming. There's a fascinating scene early in the film where he is directing someone to evade capture, the cold, calm, calculating way he does it is fascinating in an intellectual way.

It's worth seeing, especially if you've already committed to the first two. I'd say if you can avoid spoilers though, this is more of a NetFlix or a matinee.