My opinion of this movie relative to others in the series

Rating: 5/10 (3 August 2007)

My favorite aspects of the Bourne movies have always been Matt Damon's "innocent hero" persona and the premise that international black ops is a horrible, squalid business, beneath the dignity of authentic humans. Show me a pervert who ENJOYS "black bag" work, and I'll show you someone who heartily deserves a hot-lead lunch, which is exactly what Jason Bourne dishes up.
On these points, the movie still delivers. In other respects, I find it less satisfying than other installments, especially the first movie.
The Hollywood craze for hand-held camera work is just getting TOTALLY asinine, and this movie is a perfect example. The camera work is so jittery and bouncy half the time, it just gets tiresome. Knock it off and LET ME SEE WHAT'S HAPPENING! In a related vein, the Director opted for such a frantic, chaotic, adrenaline-freaked visual style for the movie, with blurry split-second cuts all jammed in next to each other throughout whole scenes, that it seriously interferes with the movie's visual intelligibility, not to mention THE STORY. Yeah, it's "exciting" and all, yup-per, uh-huh, wappa-wappa, but at the same time it left me feeling bewildered at times, and to what purpose? This sort of photography and editing has its place, no doubt, but the key is *punctuation*. It has to be a counterpoint to longer, stable-camera shots and the like, or else it gets really overbearing really fast, which it DID. The Director completely abdicates any discipline about this.
My gut tells me this is a tawdry way to crank out "uh ack-shun moo-vee" (for which an audience is certain) while completely copping out on the elusive, expensive thing called 'ART'  at which point I realize I'VE BEEN HAD! The first movie worked much harder to engage me on this level. The second one slipped significantly here, and this one slips further still. It's just an exercise in raking in $$$ from an assured market.