People, he's on the move or oh, my shaking hands

Rating: 2/10 (12 August 2007)

First things first: with The Bourne Supremacy and now Bourne Ultimatum, director Paul Greengrass has used up his hand-held camera privileges (hereafter referred to as "fidgetcam") for the next 10 years. The fidgetcam technique, when used for a realistic work, like Greengrass' own Bloody Sunday, is an effective one. When used in an action film filled with fight scenes and car chases, it makes what could be exciting just a continuously out of focus blur. And out of focus ain't what I paid $9.50 for, okay? Ultimatum is a remarkably silly film and I was giggling within the first five minutes, as I was whipped cinematically between oh, five or fifteen cities. But who got the chance to count with the fidgetcam running at full speed? Which is pretty much all Matt Damon's Jason Bourne does: walk purposefully down hallways and streets, through hotels, parking lots, malls and office buildings. Every so often he'll stop to pummel 3 or 4 people, point a gun or recite 2 lines of dialog before re-starting his endless, fidgety walking tour of the world. Not that the lines in the script are terribly interesting anyway, unless innumerable scenes of people snarling into cell phones, banging away at lap tops magically connected to every camera and phone in the world or David Strathairn and Joan Allen doing snippy, steely-eyed spy routines while shouting "People" or "He's on the move" push you to the edge of your seat. This film is hardly worth renting much less leaving your home for on a hot summer night.