You'll be on the edge of your seat so long as you leave your brains at the door

Rating: 8/10 (15 September 2007)

Like practically all of the recent Bond films up to the frankly magnificent "Casino Royale", the first two Bourne movies were highly enjoyable if hardly memorable, (the problem with most of these films is that they all look and sound the same). Now we have the third, though probably not the last, in the Bourne franchise and if it distinguishes itself from its predecessors it's due almost entirely to being one long chase from start to finish. When it pauses for breath, which is seldom, it is as banal as any thick-ear action driven movie can be. It helps, of course, if you have seen the one before and recently since this seems to kick off where that one ended. It's still possible to enjoy number three, of course, even if you haven't seen the others though making head or tails of the plot may well prove impossible.
As a high adrenalin action picture it's fantastic, literally as well as figuratively. It begins in Moscow, moves to London then Madrid, Tangiers and ends in New York while Bourne traverses the globe without baggage, money or sleep, (the 'superman' theme is stretched beyond credulity), pursued all the while by sundry assassins and it's in the chases themselves that the film really takes off. There is a wonderful, seat-edging sequence filmed in and around Waterloo Station, a chase through the alley-ways and over the roof-tops of Tangiers and a car chase through New York all of which are master-classes in timing and, although each is lengthy in itself, none of which seem to drag on too long.
It's in the plot department that the film falls down, (Bourne is still seeking his identity), and a good cast, (in support, David Strathairn, Scott Glenn, Albert Finney, Joan Allen and Paddy Considine), are largely wasted. As Bourne, Matt Damon uses that chiseled Mount Rushmore expression to good effect, his granite chops never betray what, if anything, he's thinking but then that may well be the one activity that's beyond him.