Camden New Journal - Cinema: The Bourne Ultimatum

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The Review - AT THE MOVIES with WILLIAM HALL
Published: 16 August 2007

Matt Damon as Jason Bourne off on another breakneck global pursuit

Bourne heads for ultimate Matt finish

THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM
Directed by Paul Greengrass
Certificate 12a

THE latest summer blockbuster brings Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) back for the third and last time – so they tell us, but who knows for sure? – as the “assassin who never was”.
Still suffering from amnesia and desperate to learn his true identity, he is lured out of hiding to make contact with a dogged journalist (Paddy Considine) who has come up with dramatic information about the secret organisation named Treadstone which trained him to become a killer for Uncle Sam.
The reporter gets shots on Platform Six at Waterloo Station by a sniper (Edgar Ramirez) concealed among the pigeons in the rafters, and Jason is on the run again. But now he is also being hunted down by a team of CIA agents under the shoot-to-kill orders of Noah (David Strathairn, brilliant as Ed Murrow in Good Night and Good Luck), a gimlet-eyed US government official in charge of the shadowy group, with an agenda all his own.
Dead bodies pile up as the fugitive takes us on an exotic trail via New York, Morocco, Spain, France and Germany.
“You couldn’t make this stuff up,” says Noah, studying Jason’s file. That’s for sure. The plot is one long breakneck chase, with director Paul Greengrass pulling out all the stops to keep us on the edge of our seats. Fight scenes erupt like a volcano, but are filmed with such bewildering speed that you never know who’s doing what to whom.
The Bourne series has been gripping and hugely entertaining, so it’s probably churlish of me to suggest that the weak point is Matt Damon himself. With his snub nose and chunky jaw-line he looks more like a fresh-faced footballer (Wayne Rooney, perhaps?) than a lethal assassin.
None of this, of course, will stop the ultimate Ultimatum from being another huge box-office hit.

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