A admirable if vastly imperfect finale

Rating: 6/10 (2 January 2011)

After what transpires in "The Bourne Supremacy" Jason Bourne is a wanted man by the C.I.A., even more so that a British journalist for "The Guardian" is starting to dig into his history and also seems to have gained access to highly confidential data concerning the Blackfriar operation, the second phase of Treadstone, which created our title hero. Jason Bourne soon traverses to London to contact the journalist, where he is forced to do his best to save the unsuspecting man's life...
A much better outing than "The Bourne Supremacy" the final act at least succeeds where the second part failed: the action. The long Tangers fight sequence or the Waterloo train station escape, where Bourne tries to lead the journalist out of danger, are extremely well done and very well worth the watch, as suspenseful and intriguingly executed scenes.
Nonetheless the last part suffers from the same weaknesses as its predecessor - the script is nowhere as tight as would be required for this movie to be called a success. In the most part it is nowhere as poorly scripted as "The Bounce Supremacy", but several scenes stick out like a sore thumb. For example when Bourne breaks into the C.I.A. to steal Blackfriar documents only to inform the department director that he is now in his office, even though this had no sense and meant Bourne lost valuable minutes to escape. Suicidal on Bourne's part? An attack of cockiness? Or just the scriptwriter thinking that this would be a cool idea? I'm quite certain it is the latter. I'm not sure if the end effect is cool, but it certainly shows Bourne as being irresponsible and prone to stupidity. Which totally misses the gist of the character...
Also some of the direction is off and several subplots are never properly dealt with. I am unaware whether this happened in the editing room or whether this is just an inherent flaw of the script. Nonetheless there are several pieces of the puzzle which are left hanging in a very hack-job fashion. For instance suggestions of a deeper relationship between Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles, the only character apart from Bourne to be in all three parts) and our hero are never expanded on. Or we have countless suggestions that Bourne was recruited partly against his will to the Treadstone project, but in the end it turns out he did everything of his own free will. But than why did he have contradictory flashbacks? Or what's with the notes in the Treadstone report, which also seem to negate this option?
All in all I very much applaud the action in the final outing, but really the more you think about the movie the more imperfect and flawed it becomes. In the end it is a shame that only the first part managed to keep a relatively coherent and sensible script...