"He is really good at staying alive, and trying to kill him and failing... just pisses him off."

I really dug The Bourne Identity and it's sequel The Bourne Supremacy. Part of it is that I dig spy movies. I mean, I want to see The Saint again. How many times have you heard that? How many people have you heard tell you that they wanted to see The Saint let alone AGAIN. I dig spy movies though. And I liked the Bourne movies. They were a great contrast to the James Bond stories. Bond was always a little jokier. A little cheesy even at times. But, that WAS Bond. It's what the stories were, and they were FUN.

Then, along came Jason Bourne. He wasn't a lot of fun. He was very real. He wasn't a big old cartoon. He was the anti-James Bond. So, what did Bond do? He changed. They made him more serious. So now, there isn't as much difference between the franchises. They're both very raw and serious.

This leads us to the question, how well does Bourne hold up in this, the new age of James Bond?

Fairly well. The Bourne Ultimatum, the third and final act of the story, amounts to one massive chase scene from London to Casablanca to New York. And while it gets a little tedious at times (hey, I can only watch a chase scene for so long before something else needs to happen) it is a fun action movie. People are constantly getting killed or stalked by CIA spooks or blowing things up, all the while Bourne is finally getting to the bottom of who he is.

As a viewer, throughout the trilogy, I felt like I was constantly in the dark about something. As though there were some tangible bit of info that I were missing. In the first movie, I chalked it up to the fact that since Bourne was in the dark, as viewers it was only natural that we should be too. That feeling continued through the second movie. This time though, while I constantly felt like I was missing something, it was much more difficult to attribute it to a story telling device. Maybe it was because it had been two years since seeing the second movie, but the pieces just didn't seem like they fit together. And, to be honest, the movie could have done a better job of catching the viewer up at the beginning.

8 Vespas blowin up because you thought the bomb was in the bag out of 10.