Fresh Air for the Spy Genre

Rating: 8/10 (24 July 2011)

As a standalone film, this still works very well. The action scenes, brief and scattered as they may be, are very well done and (mostly) grounded, especially by Hollywood standards. It's not quite as smart as it would like you to believe, but remains intelligent enough to avoid becoming a stereotypically brainless puncher, and I enjoyed the constantly-flipping roles of the ongoing cat-and-mouse game between Bourne and his handlers. I found the ending to be too abrupt, tying everything up into a conveniently neat package and omitting a lot of vital details along the way, but I guess that's what the sequels were for.