I really liked the first movie and thought the second one was okay, but Ultimatum was just bad:
Action. The whole reason the first Bourne movie was something special was that it's action was somewhat believable. Boom-boom-boom, it's over, and Damon's standing there with that oh-****-I'm-still-alive look on his face. Highly trained super-spy, yes, but every fight scene felt like he'd got away with something, like it was just survival.
This time around, CIA Goon #1 sticks his gun through the doorway, Bourne beats the crap out of him; CIA Goon #2 sticks his gun through the doorway, etc. Or CIA Goons #3-8 converge on Bourne, Bourne beats the crap out of them. It just felt coregraphed this time around, more Jackie Chan than real life.
Repetition and poor story. There just wasn't much new and cool in this one. The action was more over the top, but not in any way new. The big fight scene with the hit-man in Morocco was pretty much the same as the fight scene in Bourne's apartment in the first movie, or at the assassin's house in the second movie (but without the bad guy's hands tied). More household props as improvised weapons.
Some scenes were just way too reminiscent of scenes from the prior films: the hair-dying scene, the Bourne's-watching-Pam-through-her-window scene. Recurring themes: sweet little Nicky turning up again, Pam's territorial pissing contest with some big bad out-of-control male colleague. A whole new set of recovered memories for Bourne. The same annoying semi-flashback sequences of overlaid images of past and present as in the second movie.
The story line was more out there. The whole CIA is evil; it water-boards its own employees and kills them off by the dozen, along with other Americans and the odd British journalist. General incoherence: do we ever figure out what Bourne was doing in Moscow in the beginning? Wasn't Bourne's dead girlfriend German? -- why then was her brother distinctly American, and what was the point of the scene where Bourne visited him anyway?
Cinematography. Camera shakes and close cropping have their place. But this was truly ridiculous. I mean, it was Blair Witch in Manhattan. Hey, cameraman, you lost 'em about a half mile back! You can stop running! How does a scene that turns into one long motion blur translate as "exciting"? Especially when it's the whole damn film. It's not gritty and realistic. It's just blurry. Really, really blurry.
Same for the countless cuts that each last, oh, two tenths of a second. Seriously, a lot of these shots had to have been just a couple of frames apiece. Were Greengrass and his editor paid by the cut? Did someone lock them in the editing room with nothing but a bottle of amphetamines and a buzz saw? (Also on the editing, I didn't think the temporal jumps were handled very well. Big jumps in time and place from scene to scene.)
Shake-cut-sh-sh-shake-shake-cut-cut-cut-c-c-c-cut-shake-cut!
Soundtrack. Must it have the same drum-'n'-bass track for the whole two hours?
Anyway, I guess it's about what's to be expected of the third movie in an action series. But I don't understand at all why so many critics liked it.
Eric