Sightlines · reception
How The Bourne Ultimatum was received
2007 · Paul Greengrass · The Bourne Ultimatum on Sightlines
The arc
Rapturously received in 2007 — a rare threequel hailed as the best of its trilogy — and it's only grown in stature since, now routinely cited as the peak of 2000s action filmmaking whose style the rest of Hollywood spent a decade imitating.
What’s debated
The eternal shaky-cam fight: is Greengrass's handheld, fast-cut action kinetic genius or incoherent chaos — a debate reignited every time someone blames the film for a decade of badly-copied 'Bourne-style' action.
Its footprint
It gave the internet the 'Jesus Christ, that's Jason Bourne' meme, and its guerrilla-shot Waterloo Station sequence and Tangier rooftop chase became the reference points an entire era of spy movies — Bond very much included — measured themselves against.
Where it stands
A consensus 'best action film of the 2000s' pick and the standard answer to 'name a trilogy that ends on its strongest entry.'
Did you know? It won all three Oscars it was nominated for — Film Editing, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing — making it the only Bourne film to win an Academy Award.