not my favorite of the 3

Rating: 7/10 (28 August 2007)

I preferred it when Bourne was thinking, not just the martial arts hero, so I liked the 1st the best when he has to use his wits & schemes with Franke Potente to learn about his past. Why she had to be killed I don't understand since the books are nothing at all like the films. So my favorite part of this installment was when he was with the British reporter, working their way through the train station despite the cameras & surveillance teams; it shows Bourne as the thinking über-spy, not just hand-to-hand combat killer. Non-stop action, sure, but that's most of what happens, so it's both the good & bad. He has money, but from where? He never eats, sleeps, or uses the toilet yet he's always freshly shaved. Maybe he IS a robot; T2 anyone?? The guy in Tangiers just about kicks Bourne's ass. And no matter the amount of fighting or wrecking cars, all Bourne ever gets is a brief limp and a couple of scrapes? Not very damn likely! And all the complaints about the "Blair-witch-esque" hand-held camera are spot on; you really can't see a lot of the action; it's just a blurry mess, wasted. Compare that to the scenes where all he has is a pen or a towel or a rolled-up magazine: great improvisation, another use of the thinking Bourne, not so much the serious, angry, take on the world Bourne we have this time around. Here he's no longer vulnerable, but feared; no longer loved, no longer human, no longer deserving of our sympathy since we learn he was a volunteer killer, which shows us that maybe the people who made him this way are not entirely to blame but they didn't go anywhere with that line of thought.