(Beijing Weekend)
Updated: 2007-11-21 10:45

Matt Damon returns as CIA-trained super spy Jason Bourne in the third of the film series, a movie guaranteeing more edge-of-the-seat action. Directed by Paul Greengrass, The Bourne Ultimatum is two hours of non-stop excitement with breathtaking, heart-racing vehicle chase sequences.

Damon is chasing the trail of his memory loss with a vengeance that started with 2002's The Bourne Identity and followed two years later by The Bourne Supremacy. Adapted from Robert Ludlum's novels, The Bourne Ultimatum, like the previous two flicks, is a tribute to Bourne's determination, his driving skills, his intelligence and especially his good luck. This time, Bourne is engaged in a desperate hunt through London, Madrid, Moscow, New York, Paris, Tangier and Turin, while secret CIA operatives in America track him using high-tech gadgets and techniques.

His past may be muddled, but Bourne is always two steps ahead of his pursuers. With an appealing blend of toughness and vulnerability, Damon is ideal for the role.

Though trained to terminate lives, Bourne has an original decency. In the last film, he was shattered by the murder of his girlfriend, and now he seeks to escape the terrible business he went into as a young man blinded by a sense of duty. Most of all, he is driven to learn his real identity and at whose behest he was taught to kill.

Simon Ross (Paddy Considine), security correspondent for The London Guardian, has been tipped off in Turin about a CIA umbrella program code-named Blackbriar, the mere mention of which on a cell phone flags some terrifyingly competent post-Patriot Act software. Enter a shady, warmongering CIA bigwig (David Strathairn) and a sweet, nonviolent one (Joan Allen), plus various background ber-spooks (Scott Glenn, Albert Finney). Bourne gets caught in the middle when he is in pursuit of Ross, whose 411 on Blackbriar may finally explain why he suffered so much.

Director Greengrass, who made the astonishing United 93 in the interim, returns for his second Bourne film (after 2004's The Bourne Supremacy) to bring the roller coaster ride to an end in a dead heat where all the plot points and surviving characters of the three films converge.

The Bourne Ultimatum is now showing.