Bourne's Ultimate Disappointment

Rating: 5/10 (12 August 2007)

First, let me state that I enjoyed the first two movies a lot. I have watched them many times, and I was looking forward to "The Bourne Ultimatum" very much. I watched it yesterday, and the disappointment still lingers.
The movie is horribly paced: It starts out with three cities in three minutes, most of them seemingly filled with zoom-in aerial pictures. I can do that too on Google Maps. Then the movie suddenly grinds to a halt, as everyone in the movie (I don't want this post to contain spoilers, hence the ambiguous wording) tries to figure out what is going on.
"Ultimatum" has terrible characters. Bourne is the only character that is still the most interesting -- how could an assassin with amnesia not be. The rest of the cast have two-dimensional cookie-cutter personalities: The evil, exchangeable killers. The cold-hearted CIA chief whose only way of dealing with anything is killing. The utterly predictable change of sides of someone. The amateur-like allusion to a past connection, including dyed hair -- from brown to black.
What I found most the most intriguing in the past two movies was Bourne's quick decision-making. He always instinctively knew what to do, there was never a bit of hesitation, and he always managed to stay one step ahead of his foes. This element is almost completely missing in "Ultimatum".
What also annoyed me tremendously, and here comes the spoiler, was the very forced happy end. Bourne said himself: "This is where it started, this is were it will end." I think it should have.