Director Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon on the set of The Bourne Ultimatum Jasin Boland/Courtesy of Universal Studios

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He laughs, but in a world in which the American government is tapping its own citizen's phones, the idea of an all-seeing, all-knowing government agency willing to kill to keep its secrets doesn't seem so far fetched. Even Greengrass has to relent a little.

"You must never lose the sense of adventure, the sense of excitement. What makes Bourne special is that it marries that sense with intelligence and it doesn't underestimate its audience. To me [the 'real world' elements] are the dash of Worcestershire sauce, the bit of chili, but it's not the meal."

What constitutes the meal, for the audiences at least, is the Bourne movies' insistence on racking up the frequent-flier miles. Over the course of the three films, we've been taken from Switzerland to Paris to Greece to India to Moscow to London to … the locales just keep adding up.

Greengrass nods approvingly: "These films take you on a journey. Unlike a lot of films, if we're in Tangiers, we're in Tangiers. We're not on some back lot somewhere." This sense of reality also proves to be the primary inspiration behind the franchise's other major selling point: white-knuckle action.

"I really liked [doing] the Tangiers sequence, the running along the roofs," says Damon, referring to a portion of the film in which Bourne escapes an opposing agent on scooter, motorcycle, and then on foot through the densely crowded Moroccan city, "because it's Bourne just 100 mph flat out. All those things we just kind of came up with once we got on the real location. That's the fun stuff. You get a bunch of guys together and go, 'Okay, what would be the smart thing to do here?' And we kind of figure out those sequences. Then, when we cut them together, and they actually work, it's a good feeling."

What presumably doesn't feel as good is when Bourne has to take on his nemesis, played by stunt performer and choreographer Joey Ansah, hand-to-hand. In fact, it was at that moment that Damon realized just how long he's been running alongside Bourne.