The Bourne Ultimatum

The last film of the trilogy. Bourne still does not remember. Images come in fragments and all of them lead to the same room. A journalist is preparing a series of articles about the programme. Bourne wants to meet him, and the agency is watching the journalist at the same time. From there the film is a chase. Moscow, Turin, Paris, London, Madrid, Tangier and New York. The section at Waterloo station is its best constructed sequence. Bourne directs the journalist by telephone, moves him away from the camera system, and the whole business is making one person invisible in a crowd. The pursuit in Tangier crosses roofs, windows and narrow streets and was filmed almost entirely handheld. What the narrative is interested in is not espionage but responsibility: when Bourne finds out who he is, the question is not memory but whether he volunteered, and the film asks that outright in the last scene. The agency side is inside the narrative. The people making the decisions sit in a room and none of them thinks he is doing wrong. The camera is deliberately restless. Constant movement, short cuts and handheld work became the series' signature and settled into the action films of the following years. Part of the Waterloo sequence was shot within the real flow of passengers, at the edge of what was permitted. The film won Academy Awards for editing, sound editing and sound mixing, an unusual result for an action sequel. Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, David Strathairn, Joan Allen, Albert Finney and Paddy Considine are in the cast. Paul Greengrass directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes realistic, fast spy action. Who it is not for: anyone troubled by a shaking camera; the film never lets that choice go.