Starring Matt Damon, Joan Allen, David Strathairn, and Julia Stiles. Rated 14A.

Fans of the Bourne series, and of the Robert Ludlum books on which they are based, know that Jason Bourne doesn't really enjoy the perks you get from being a spy–you know, how great is it to be able to meet beautiful people, thwart the unjustly powerful, and crash through 17 windows with only a few rakish scratches to show for it?

In The Bourne Ultimatum , he is played, for the third time, by Matt Damon, seen here dashing through six white-skied countries in under two hours. No wonder he hooked up with Franka Potente, from Run Lola Run . Of course, his love for Potente's character in the first two flicks is what sends him off the deep end in this one.

Glimmers of his pre-Bourne identity are coming back to him now that she's gone, and he wants to stick it to his bosses, played by Scott Glenn and David Strathairn, who have decided that Jason's gone all Friday the 13th on them. Meanwhile, the analyst (a convincing Joan Allen) in charge of finding him isn't so sure that killing your top agent is the best way to build a reliable intelligence outfit.

Directed by Paul Greengrass, who also helmed The Bourne Supremacy and United 93 , the movie is good action fun with a timely political edge. The tale, written by series stalwart Tony Gilroy among others, posits that a London investigative journalist (Paddy Considine) would be dumb enough to utter the name of a black-ops program into an unsecured cellphone and that the CIA is now competent enough to find and use that information the same day.

In the end, I'm not quite sure I cared about the Manchurian Candidate aspects of the story, as represented by an evil doctor (Albert Finney). And if they didn't have enough work to justify Julia Stiles being in the third installment, the filmmakers should have just admitted that to her. They do seem to know, however, that Robert Ludlum is dead, although the ending suggests that Damon might know where some secret story lines are buried.