Saw "The Bourne Ultimatum" yesterday.

After enjoying the previous two movies in the Bourne series, I was pretty excited to see it - and it certainly continued the trend of being amongst the best in it's genre of action thrillers, probably ranking with the latest Bond movie as the top action movies I've seen in a while (I haven't seen the new Die Hard yet, which I'm also curious about).

The story is nothing new or clever, but it's a classic: the big, bad CIA is hunting down a rogue agent/antihero (in this example, probably don't eve need the "anti") under the guise of protecting national security, but it's really just part of a cover up to protect the people in power. David Straitharn takes over in the Brian Cox role of the key agent villain, and he works with his shady superior Scott Glenn, and has to form an uneasy partnership with Joan Allen, who seems to be taken Jason Bourne's side one too many times for Straithairn's liking. Both, of course, have an army of techies at their disposal to track Bourne and friends, and numerous "assets" to send after people, or enforce such fantastic agency language as the "standing kill order" Straithorne puts out on Jason Bourne.

Aside from all that, what really made the movie was the action sequences, which are enhanced by great camera work. The camera is shaking and unsteady almost the entire movie (a phenomena which I enjoyed, but which drove someone I was at the theater with to leave for a few minutes to get her head straight) There are plenty of crashes and shattered glass - a motorbike chase, a police car chase, a rooftop jumping scene and a fantastic one-on-one unarmed tete-a-tete with Bourne and one of the "assets." Very few slow scenes - a couple of story related ones, but for the most part quality action all around, and a swift-moving fiml. Highly enjoyable.

The Bourne Ultimatum 8.1