The Bourne Ultimatum

I think we must be relative latecomers to the world of amnesiac super assassin Jason Bourne - we only got around to watching the first two films in the trilogy before xmas after they had been on the pvr box for ages, and now we've just watched the third film on a blu ray disc from Lovefilm.

It's very much a continuation of the story, kicking off where the previous one finished. It's full of flashbacks and references to earlier events, so you really do need to have seen the other films to make sense of it. It's confusing enough with a moles and traitors and secret black-ops factions, and a plot line that flits from Moscow to Paris to London to Tangiers and probably other points in between, finally ending up in New York like some sort of demented world tour. It's nice to see European locations being used effectively in an action block buster, and Paul Greengrass's direction just about stays on the right side of hyper-kinetic.

It was also nice to see Paddy Considine in a notable supporting role as an investigative journalist trying to uncover the conspiracy at the heart of everything. Mat Damon turns in his usual stony faced performance as the eponymous Bourne and he performs an impressive number of his own stunts including some bone crunching fight scenes.

All in all, it's complete tosh with a number of gaping plot holes if you think about it for more than a few seconds, but fortunately the non-stop action doesn't afford you that opportunity to worry too much. We did have to pause a few times to work out what was going on, and who was double crossing who, but that's one of the benefits of watching at home.

Weighing the uber-paranoid story against the stylish action, it's actually a perfectly fine way to spend a Saturday night in front of the telly, I would say. Worth a watch.