KEY POINTS:
Herald rating: 5/5
There's something fantastically askew about the pacing of The Bourne Ultimatum.
True, the two previous films in the trilogy didn't lack for momentum.
But Ultimatum establishes its own headrush rhythm as its default tempo from the start and then rarely lets up.
It's a movie that might feel better watched from a piece of exercise equipment than a cinema seat, and preferably one with a cardiac monitor attached.
It begins by dropping us back to where Jason Bourne is trying to evade capture in Moscow from the end of the previous instalment. An electrifying two or so hours later, it ends with a scene which is neatly elliptical to the beginning of the trilogy.
In between, the third hoofs it across Europe, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.
It offers nerve-racking cat and mouse games in London railway stations, a mad stunt-filled pursuit across the roofs and through the upstairs windows of Tangiers, and surely what is one of the great car chases in film history on the streets of New York.
Which would be exhausting if it stopped being so inventive. Or Damon wasn't so effective as the amnesiac assassin whose suppressed conscience has slowly got the better of him. Even if he does that funny head-twitch thing when he has a flashback. The previous films have used Damon's features with their All-American blankness as an asset. Here though you can really see the anger and hurt behind the identity crisis - and not just in the fights, though there are plenty of dazzling stoushes showing Bourne's highly-trained cruel creative streak, especially the one in which he employs a handy hardback book to make his point to a CIA colleague sent to terminate him.
But this isn't the escapism of Die Hard or even a Casino Royale, the first Bond film to have toughed up its act after the success and pared-back style of the first two Bourne-flicks.
It's far more involving, physical and paranoid.
And up to date too - director Greengrass (United 93) and his writers deftly manage to drag Robert Ludlum's original spy saga from the Cold War to the War on Terror, an era where black hoods, "rendition" and "experimental interrogation" are the new tools of maintaining US national security, even while abroad.
While Bourne goes from station to station in Europe, there is another thriller of office politics going on in the CIA corridors of power.
There, the truculent David Strathairn is the man with a personal stake in shutting Bourne down. But he finds himself at loggerheads with fellow executive agent Joan Allen, who is sympathetic to their rogue employee and increasingly suspects the agency may have crossed the line in creating Bourne in the first place.
Both Strathairn and Allen are riveting; so too is Stiles as a junior CIA agent who crossed Bourne's path in the previous chapter.
Likewise, Paddy Considine offers a convincing turn as a Guardian investigative journalist who gets himself involved in the conspiracy.
His rendezvous with Bourne at Waterloo Station while being tracked by various spooks is a dazzling piece of action choreography.
But it's just one of several heartstoppers that make Ultimatum live up to its threat of a title. This is a classic capper to a terrific trilogy.
Cast: Matt Damon, Joan Allen, Julia Stiles, David Strathairn
Director: Paul Greengrass
Rating: M (contains violence)
Running time: 115 mins
Screening: SkyCity, Hoyts, Berkeley
Verdict: Makes that new Bond look old and rather unfit, all over again.
