Jason Bourne's highest point

Rating: 9/10 (27 August 2016)

How many movie trilogies do you know that don't go south towards the end? The answer is, even aside of the spy movie genre there aren't too many, and all of them are classics. Now, Matt Damon & Co made that list one item longer.
True, there's not that big of a competition in this genre, for the spy film franchises that take themselves seriously and live long enough are so rare that you could count them by one hand's fingers. There's James Bond, there's Ethan Hunt, and there's another JB now. But Mission Impossible has long transcended that line beyond which the laws of reality don't apply. As for James Bond, it's a phoenix that can only live on by burning up at the end of its every incarnation, and Spectre was a perfect example of such pyre. Yet, Jason Bourne managed to walk that line between carnal ashes and mythification and do it with flying colors.
The first group of people we should thank for that remarkable achievement is the screenwriters. The spy thrillers are only as good as their story, and when the story bends under scrutiny, the whole movie goes down. In that aspect, the Jason Bourne trilogy was played brilliantly, with enough loose ends to keep us involved throughout the three-act story and with enough wit to tie them up in a single convergence point towards the finale. The second film might have dragged a bit and has gone over the top a few times (the unbelievable yellow taxi car chase being one of them), but it was worth the amazing two-point transition into the third film that not just redefined the meaning of the second film's ending but also gave us a new angle to look at the main character at. Such things don't happen occasionally, that's an intentional masterpiece, something I simply can't help admiring.
And of course there's Matt Damon. Now, in 2016, we know him as a big star. And of course he was already a star in 2002, for his role in Good Will Hunting was not to ignore. Yet it seems that it's Jason Bourne that really made Mr Damon who he is today, a solid all-round performer who's able to bring a deep emotional charge into a whirlwind of action.
Speaking of action, it alone could earn the JB trilogy a place among the titans of the genre. The fight scenes and the chases are what make these movies hold their viewers at the edge of the seat, and no shaky camera or rapid cuts could deprive them of the sense of true realism that such action monsters as Mission Impossible or Fast and Furious tend to lack these days. Even though Mr Bourne manages to dispatch his opponents without seemingly breaking a sweat (and definitely without breaking anything more vital), he still looks and feels like a human being who's not deathproof but simply trained enough to outplay it.
Even though the producers' greed made them try to capitalize on the JB success (which they failed at, it seems) and release a totally disposable spin-off movie, it doesn't at all reduce the trilogy's value, making The Bourne Ultimatum a Skyfall of its franchise, but without the disgrace of Spectre. The phoenix didn't burn down, it just flew away to its own lost paradise. Off the grid, exactly where Jason Bourne had wished to stay.