A Bourne again Fan

Aside.

The film critic of the Daily Telegraph said ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’ was the best big budget film of the summer so as MTL is, unlike me, a James Bond fan I thought he would enjoy it. I am a Bourne virgin – the film is the third of a series but over the last week I have seen the third, the first and then the second – in that order, so suppose I am now a bit of a Bourne tart.

They are excellent examples of that genre and Matt Damon, in spite of being a programmed killing machine, with amnesia, makes you care about him. He invests the part with a sort of robotic intensity apparent in his walking and running- and there are a lot of both - and the beat of the music drives the action, the fights and the chases generating excitement that leaves you breathless.

MTL found it too noisy and there is a sequence in New York involving cars with such crash , bang, wallop sound effects I was ready to shout ‘Enough already!’ the action is quite difficult to follow but it gradually seeps in and the more you watch the more it makes sense. I wonder if anyone here has read the original novel by Robert Ludlum because I couldn’t understand how he could have let himself be programmed in the first place.

It is not my kind of film at all but in retrospect I appreciated it – all the more after seeing the prequels. We do like Matt – he looks like Daniel, our step- grandson and he alternates between thugishness and a haunting beauty. There are two strong women’s parts – one young and one well into middle age – excellently played.

In spite of the noise and the violence I was gripped by the excitement. I won’t give the ending away but someone called out ‘Yay!’ and I think it was me.