3. The Bourne Ultimatum
It's very rare for a movie series to get better as it progresses, in particularly a commercial action series but that's exactly what happened with the Bourne franchise. Bringing in Paul Greengrass for the second part and retaining him for the third was a masterstroke as his unique, frenetic use of handheld cameras injected the series with a dose of frantic intensity. Greengrass was most noted for his documentary work before stepping into the murky realm of feature films and its clear the techniques he used when shooting fact have served him well when dealing with fiction as The Bourne Ultimatum was the best pure action film of the 00's. Matt Damon continued to grow more comfortable in the role and he's a long way from the baby-faced assassin of the first film. In The Bourne Ultimatum he feels like a cold, cynical, world-weary killer. Everything from the blistering action scenes to unbeatable editing added up to make this one of the biggest escapist thrillers of the last decade and you can only be eternally grateful it escaped its early production problems.