Jason Bourne
I prepped for the new Bourne film by binge watching the previous three films in the days leading up to the screening. Yes, I said three films, in much the same way that I will tell you that there are only four Star Wars films. The films still entertained well and had me even more excited to see Matt Damon kick all sorts of arse all over the big screen. And let me just say this, Jason Bourne did not disappoint. I left with a smile on my face and a hope that this would be the start of another trilogy. A boy can dream, right?
The reality of Jason Bourne is that it’s a solid, but pretty grounded, action film. It’s not as flashy as some Hollywood blockbusters, but still a great source for an evening’s entertainment.
There are just a couple of things that may just trip up the Bourne juggernaut. The main one being that, as was evident by some of the comments over heard in the screening, there are a huge number of people who have no connection to Bourne, who don’t know the history, who will never know what it means to remember the park bench scene from the first film. And without this connection, I think Jason Bourne goes from awesome to pretty good in an instant.
The biggest issue for me, a Bourne fanatic, however was the sheer overload of flashbacks. 90% of which were redundant as they were just showing us what we already knew, over and over again. Greengrass could have slipped in another of his epic action sequences if it weren’t for the bloody flashbacks.
Bourne is older, possibly not wiser, but still packs a punch when needed, and still brings his A-game to run circles around the bad guys.
If you’ve never seen a Bourne film, go watch this one, then rent the previous three and pretend like they are prequels.
Rating: M Violence.
FILMGUIDE rating:
