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12A, 120mins

I have never seen a more exciting finale to an action trilogy than The Bourne Ultimatum. But there is nothing remotely comfortable about the ride. The director, Paul Greengrass – who made United 93 – has brought the full force of his documentary skills to bear on Matt Damon’s fight for survival. The claustrophobic violence is so desperately intense I found some scenes almost impossible to watch. The pace is relentless. The story, as usual, is as reliable as quicksand.

For what it’s worth, Jason Bourne can’t remember a single detail about his life before he became the CIA’s most lethal killing machine. A desire for answers is set to cost him his life. The secrets run too deep. The CIA wants to terminate him with extreme prejudice.

Damon’s tortured blank of a hero has survived two nailbiting thrillers in which the CIA has failed to murder him. In The Bourne Ultimatumhe decides to turn his supernatural survival skills into weapons. He is not that far removed from Daniel Craig’s angry new Bond. His kills are visceral, nasty pleasures, and he has an evangelical need to right a profound wrong.

Damon is magical in the lead role. He is unique among Hollywood Alist stars for the quality and consistency of his lies. His greatest roles are treacherous façades. His outstanding performances in The Talented Mr Ripley and Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning The Departed are obsessed with identity.

Tony Gilroy’s script doesn’t waste many lines on Bourne’s existential crisis, or why David Strathairn’s CIA sleaze-bag has spent a fortune trying to murder him. But the writer does make space for a terrific raft of villains and victims. Albert Finney’s baggy face looms large in a fish-eye lens as a deranged doctor, and Paddy Considine is a preposterously handsome journalist who lives to regret his last story.

Greengrass’s direction is remarkable for its slices of throwaway brilliance. This is a masterclass in how to make a nimble and hugely expensive thriller look as if it were assembled in Camden market. Purists might balk at the shaky newsreel style. But the tension this guerrilla form of film-making generates sinks fingernails into seats.

The director has absorbed the tricks that make scandal and conspiracy such compulsive viewing on TV soaps such as The West Wingand 24. But there is nothing cheap about the bone-shattering beauty of his car smashes, or the pitch-perfect symphonies of shattering glass. I had no idea Greengrass had this gift. The stunts are truly sensational: box-office manna for audiences who might be stumped by the mumbling plot. The director also knows when to be artless, even clumsy. The biting close-ups of knife fights tie your guts into complicated knots.

Bourne’s mission to seek out the creeps who play God with his life relies on technology and people he can’t trust for two consecutive sentences. He has flashbacks to a tiled white room. These bitter clues are so vivid he ends up on his knees. The acid question, when you leave the cinema, is simply this: is he executioner, or victim?

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