Bourne's Back in Business

Rating: 8/10 (27 August 2007)

Bourne is back.
Jason Bourne, contentedly hiding out with his girl (again played by Franka Potente), dives back into action when a hit-man comes calling. Turns out Bourne has been framed in the killing of two CIA operatives, and getting rid of him would mean the CIA would be left with no suspects. But of course Bourne can't be brought down by a mere assassin, and the rest of the movie is another virtually non-stop string of action set pieces, culminating in perhaps the most amazing car chase sequence I've ever seen.
Director Paul Greengrass could film a bar mitzvah and make it exciting -- his films are edited to within an inch of their lives, but somehow his herky-jerky camera-work and lightspeed cutting never become distracting, as they would in the hands of someone else. He has a nearly genius ability to choreograph action so that we're always seeing whatever we need to see when we need to see it, despite whatever else is going on at the same time. The Bourne movies maybe aren't lasting masterpieces, but they're small classics in their genre.
Since Chris Cooper copped out at the end of the last one, Joan Allen steps in as the lead CIA agent on Bourne's trail, and she does a good job of looking hot and pensive at the same time.
Grade: A