Non-stop visceral excitement

Rating: 10/10 (4 August 2007)

Do you remember the railroad compartment scene in "From Russia with Love?" You know the one I mean. The one where Sean Connery and Robert Shaw engage in a no-holds-barred hand-to-hands fight. The one where nobody in the audience dared to breathe while the fight was in progress. This is the first movie in 44 years where I had that feeling.
Except in this movie there are six or seven sequences that are every bit as exciting as that scene.
Recently, I have seen several attempts to compare Jason Bourne to James Bond, but they always fail because Bourne and Bond are two very different sorts of agents. Bond is suave and sophisticated. Bourne is a finely tuned instrument of death and little more; he is more like Robert Shaw's character than Sean Connery's. Except he is beginning to remember who he was before the government made him that way and he resents it.
I highly recommend this startling and exciting movie.