Matt Damon rarely stops moving in “The Bourne Ultimatum”: He’s constantly running or jumping or punching, and when he does stand still long enough to say something, it’s always in clipped, impatient sentences, as if he can hardly wait to quit gabbing and get going again.

He’s an action hero in the truest sense of the word: He expresses himself by doing instead of talking, and the movie itself follows his cue. It’s an action picture that’s been distilled and compressed to its tightest, barest, almost abstract essence, and it’s absolutely thrilling.

“The Bourne Ultimatum” is the third (and, apparently, final) chapter in the saga of the amnesiac CIA operative Jason Bourne, who has spent the last two movies dodging assassins while trying to find out who he really is and why his former bosses now seem so eager to kill him. By the end of the movie, Bourne finally gets his answers, but as intriguing as they are, they’re not nearly as engrossing as his quest to reach them.

Returning director Paul Greengrass has refined the shaky, handheld-camera technique he used in the previous film in the trilogy (“The Bourne Supremacy”) to bring tension to simple scenes of exposition, such as the stretches inside the CIA headquarters in New York, where two of Bourne’s superiors (David Strathairn and Joan Allen) track his movements around the globe and argue over how best to apprehend him.

But it’s the three long action setpieces in “The Bourne Ultimatum” where Greengrass’ direction generates the most excitement. In the first, set in London’s mammoth Waterloo train station, Bourne tries to rendezvous with a British journalist (Paddy Considine) while dodging enemy surveillance. In the second, set in Tangiers, Bourne chases after a hit man (Edgar Ramirez) in pursuit of a CIA operative (Julia Stiles). And in the third, set in New York City, Greengrass choreographs a car chase so spectacular, it makes the concept of car chases seem brand-new again.

Aided considerably by John Powell’s relentless, nerve-racking score, “The Bourne Ultimatum” delivers a rare kind of visceral rush, one that works on your gut and your brain at the same time. It’s not just the various stunts and fistfights that make the movie so ridiculously enjoyable, but the multiple levels of spy-versus-spy shenanigans that are at play at any given moment. The movie is as much fun to watch for its visual spectacle as for the crafty, complex head games the characters are always playing on each other.

And in the middle of it all is Bourne, played with heroic severity and intensity by Damon, a hero for an anti-hero era. Jason Bourne may or may not return, but it’s hard to imagine another “Bourne” movie ever topping this one.

‘The Bourne Ultimatum

3 1/2 stars

Cast: Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, David Strathairn, Joan Allen, Paddy Considine, Edgar Ramirez, Albert Finney, Scott Glenn.

Director: Paul Greengrass.

Running time: 114 minutes. Rated PG-13: Vulgar language, violence, gore.