Meanwhile, in another part of the forest…

…and on a totally different subject…

…just been to see the new Jason Bourne film, The Bourne Ultimatum, with Matt Damon again as the lead, and one of my favourite female actors, the ever-versatile Joan Allen, back in a strong counterpart role. Only one word for it: brilliant!

The story, of course, has almost no connection with the original novels (they can’t, they killed off his partner in the second film, but his wife plays a key and continuing part in all the novels!), but under Paul Greengrass’ direction the pace is relentless (together with, yep, lots and lots of different car-chases in different cities – they just love their car-chases! 🙂 ). Also ties up a lot of the implied loose ends, with echoes back to both the previous films. I won’t spoil the ending, just say that it’s well done.

(To give you an idea of Greengrass’ eye for detail, go see the second film, The Bourne Supremacy. Somewhere around the middle of the story, Bourne is in a taxi in Berlin. For little more than a second [I counted it as just thirty frames] a poster is visible in amongst the general muddle of the moving background of the shot, while the emphasis is on Bourne, sitting still, partly looking out of the window, deep in thought. That’s all the clue that we get that Bourne will use the information of the poster – about a student demonstration on the Alexanderplatz – as the core of his following plan.)

For those who are into such things, one petty error I spotted in this film, a name misspelled (‘Neal Daniels’ rather than ‘Neil Daniels’) during an onscreen computer search.  That’s it, though.

Not generally into violence and suchlike, but for a film-buff and apprentice film-writer like me the whole thing is more like an enormous education. Recommended.