The Ultimate: Bourne or not to Bourne?

So it's usually a bad idea to jump into a movie series third one in. You get this feeling of "WTF?" and feel like you're spending the whole movie catching up.

That's what I felt like in this third installment of the Bourne series. This isn't a bad thing...just a fault of my own going in because this is one heck of a crazy action movie. Now let me take you back a few years (cue jazzy background music):

The year 2002...or 2003...forget which. The location...my living room in Brampton, Ontario. Nineteen floors up on a crisp spring evening. I pop in the first Bourne movie: The Bourne Identity. I don't do this because I thought the previews were intriguing. No. I wasn't a Matt Damon fan...and I couldn't take him seriously as an action star after his affiliation with Kevin Smith (Chasing Amy, and Dogma). I marked him as a talented yet moderately interesting celebrity. No...Matt Damon was not the reason I popped in the movie. I put it in because I loved the book. I enjoyed the premise of a guy waking up with no memory but all these skills to survive and thwart enemies. A book I read back in high school after I picked up an old 1970's copy at a used book store.
So I start to watch and find myself wondering if they should've renamed the movie the "Bored Identity". I didn't even finish the first one.
Because of this I skipped Bourne Supremacy and planned on skipping this one too.

Back to present: A couple good friends invite us out to see it. Their enthusiasm was tough to dismiss...maybe I was wrong about these movies?

The verdict: Exceptionally entertaining. Intense action. And Matt Damon can pull off a bonafide action star...I even thought at one point that Jason Bourne would be the one person on Earth capable of out bad-assing Jack Bauer of 24...and that's a level I don't through around lightly (See my review on Live Free or Die Hard).

One recommendation though: Either watch the other two movies or read the books before going in. You don't want to play catch up for this one. But even if you haven't followed the story up to this one, at least you'll be entertained with action sequences with an intensity the likes of which you've never seen.

Now excuse me while I go a borrow Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Identity to give those a second try...

7.6 memory flashbacks out of 10 (For those who hadn't seen the previous two movies)

8.5 overthrown conspirators out of 10 (For those who have)

Avg: 8.05 Matt Damon grimaces out of 10