Putting the Asset on Standby until the Rendition Protocol Arrives

Being British, however long I live in the cut-throat climes of South-East Asia and however much I earwig the conversations of hard-assed business types with rippling muscles scarcely concealed by sharp suits – but enough of my taste in women – I'll always favour the underdog at heart.

Like my reluctance to sit down and make a will, my romanticising sentimentality is a failing I periodically pretend to do something about but always prefer to leave undisturbed in its blissful ignorance. Too much self-knowledge, I reckon, is as bad as too little.

When it comes to visiting Vietnam for the first time, as I plan to do later this year, the closest I'll come to the natives is capturing them on my Canon Powershot. To actually live in a hut with no air-con, eat gristle, get no sleep, get bitten by mosquitoes and have to go out and do manual work from dawn to dusk is not something that appeals very much.

It doesn't appeal much to many Vietnamese either, who'd resettle in the US and A sooner than you could say "Good Morning, Vietnam". Though if they knew they were going to be force-fed a diet of Robin Williams, they might just stick around in Hanoi wearing one of those funny hats.

Thus, when I watched the first in the Bourne series of films, I was delighted that the nerdish Matt Damon would be playing the part of the hero. I think I first came across Matt in Good Will Hunting (a title which to this day conjures up images for me of the search for harmony). I think he did a bit of a cameo in Jay and Silent Bob (which I saw on a plane and thought was hilarious and then saw at home and thought "What had I been thinking?") with his good mate from Ivy League days Ben Cornflake. Then, after a bit of a hiatus, I caught him in Ocean's Eleven, in which he was the wimpiest of the lot. Even Eliot Gould, doing his Quentin Crisp impression, radiated a greater air of manliness.

I've got to confess that I've enjoyed each of the Bourne movies. The basic premise of a bloke who doesn't know who he is appeals to me far more than it ought to, I suspect. Then again, when a fellow finally finds out at the end of the third film that his name is David Webb your heart goes out to him. You also know that there just have to be more films in which he traverses the globe in his ultimately successful attempt to remove all traces from all computer systems everywhere of his former identity as minority shareholder rights activist, corporate governance investigator and scourge of Lily Chiang.

The latest in the Bourne series, The Bourne Ultimatum, has Jason (yes, they gave him a wimpy name, but wait till he starts driving off roofs or jumping from the tenth floor of buildings into the Hudson River or killing an Arab assassin who looks like World Cup Winner Youri Djorkaeff in a squat-toilet in Tangier) leaving Moscow because there's nothing to buy in the shops, travelling to Waterloo Station in London, stopping off in Tangeria so he can run across some roofs – he has a thing for roofs – and then going to New York to confront Albert Finney.

In this last task, sadly, he fails (his only other failure in the series, as far as I can remember, being to save his rather indifferent looking girlfriend Marie from the assassin's bullet in India), as he can't understand a single word Albert says. It is many years now since, as an unwilling schoolboy, I sat through four hours of Albert hamming it up as Tamburlaine the Great at the National Theatre (one of the world's few dramas where the body count exceeds Bourne's), but in those days the ravages of three packs of Bensons a day had not taken their toll. It is a mixture of shame at being told his real name is David Webb and frustration at being unable to understand a word Albert is saying that forces Jason to take, for him, the easy way out and jump through a window into the Hudson.

The strength of the film, though, lies in its London scenes. Not content with aerial shots of the Houses of Parliament, lots of red buses and black cabs, no snow and nobody wearing fur hats, the filmmakers hammer home to American audiences that we've left Moscow by making Bourne's London contact a journalist on the Guardian newspaper. You learn quite a bit about his leanings just by looking at him: he has a haircut like Kyan from Queer Eye and he carries a satchel over his shoulder. He opens his mouth and all doubt is removed: he's got an effete northern accent, and his name is Simon.

Back in the US and A, Albert has a henchman played by Scott Glen. In case the audience hasn't cottoned on to the fact that these are the bad guys, these loose cannon CIA top dogs are given the names Noah and Ezra. The reason they pulled the Manchurian Candidate number on David Webb was to facilitate a neo-con Zionist fundamentalist takeover of Tangeria and introduce a retrenchment package for human rights hacks on the Guardian.

You know Ezra is a baddie because he's white, he's a man, he wears rimless glasses, he looks like Sven-Göran Eriksson and he doesn't esteem his female colleague Pam. Just because she's no oil painting and he'd obviously prefer to be working with Jodie Foster (who has more charisma in her little finger than Pam has in her whole skinny body), that's still no reason for making her the patsy. "If Blackbriar goes south, we'll hang it round her neck and start again," he announces to the geeks in the ops room. It's also no reason for talking as if he's reading everything from a script. "I want rendition protocols and put the asset on standby, just in case."

Back in London, England, Bourne contacts Simon and the conversation is terse: "Waterloo Station. South entrance. Thirty minutes. Come alone." The response from eavesdropping Ezra is instant: "Let's activate the asset." The trouble is that the asset is confused by mixed metaphors: so even when he's given the green light, he's still in the nest. Pam and Ezra meet for lunch to try and sort out the dialogue, but it's too late. Ezra's had one Heart-Healthy Omelette too many and loses his temper when Pam suggests he eats the yolks too for a more balanced diet. "Don't second guess an operation from an armchair," he snaps at her.

Meanwhile, Bourne's new bird, Nicky Parsons, is so hot that we'll forgive him for dropping his guard beside the Ganges.

"Why are you helping me?" he asks – the only person on the planet who can't see that she wants to get into his pants.

"It was difficult for me [meaningful pause as her come-to-bed eyes open wider] with you," Nicky replies, the most words she strings together in the whole of the film.

Jason is so moved that he hot-wires a two-stroke scooter to save her from Youri Djorkaeff, and the rest, as they say, is a Code Ten abort.