Jason Bourne (2016)

Starring: Matt Damon, Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander, Vincent Cassel, Julia Stiles

Director: Paul Greengrass

I must have seen the three Bourne films about a million times. I’m not sure what about them get to me so much. I know it’s partly to do with Damon as Bourne (I never bothered with the Jeremy Renner cash in) and it’s partly the memory loss/PTSD type story line, but I think they’re also well constructed thrillers with some interesting emotionally realised characters.

This film misses some of the point of the whole thing, but it’s not a bad film exactly. Jason is drawn out again as further corruption in the CIA (or whatever) means that he’s once again a target, and this time he has questions about his father. In the meantime, there’s a whole social media/privacy plot involving the US government and something about terrorism being used as a device to cover up government ops. That was the part that felt awkward to me. It felt too conspiracy theory/hipster concerns to make me really care about it. Alicia Vikander is the person questioning leadership and helping Bourne out, while Tommy Lee Jones is the usual acronym bad guy, though he plays it very well. Thrown into this is an agent that Bourne crossed who is sent to kill him, played by Vincent Cassel, who has the face for aristocratic evil.

You get the idea. It’s a really entertaining film. I love the action sequences and the location changes, and all the parts where Bourne has to get information, something is encrypted, someone attacks him, he has to drive really fast with a serious face. But it was a bit of a huge film. It was like comic book blockbuster. It didn’t have the heart that the previous films had. It felt less about keeping things under the radar and going deeper into what Jason has been through, you know that basis in realism, than repeating itself and adding car chases to rival Fast and The Furious’s ridiculousness. (And you know it’s bad when I am saying a car chase was a bit much)

I don’t know. Go see it. You’ll have fun. But you probably won’t get that funny feeling in your stomach that you get when you see a film that really makes you feel something. And that’s what watching movies is really all about, right?

See It If: you love action movies or you’re a Bourne fan, but it’s not a game changer by any means.