Jason Bourne

This review may contain spoilers!

Well it's official: Jason Bourne is back and better than ever! I would give Jason Bourne an 8/10.

This film has a story that is a great continuation from the original trilogy of Bourne films, not only in the sense that we get to see a Bourne tortured by what he's willfully done as a government operative but also to see how the CIA has developed as a greater threat with more assets than it once had. Everything about the film practically screamed homage with many scenes being tasteful throwbacks to the original films, all the while nurturing a new story and element of Bourne's character that kept the film fresh and interesting. The cinematography was really sharp and I appreciated how the director could capture all angles of a setting as well as the intensity of fight scenes; the editing really complimented this, keeping the film moving at a relatively quick rate so that you always felt like things were moving forward. The fight sequences looked really nice, Bourne films don't play out and you get some very realistic dirty looking fights.

Matt Damon, who played Jason Bourne, did such a great job returning as the series' protagonist; Damon creates a Bourne who feels more tired and tortured than he has in past iterations.

However the best performance came from Tommy Lee Jones, who played CIA Director Robert Dewey. Jones has probably become my favourite Bourne antagonist pretty quickly. He's immediately an extremely sinister figure, a character who has the full power of the American Intelligence agencies behind him and he's bringing it all down upon Bourne. He's also got this gritty and unpredictable edge where he will go off the reservation just to have Bourne put down like a dog, one of the villains that will define 2016's movie antagonists.

Despite being an all round brilliant film there was a tendency to borrow scenes or moments directly from the original trilogy in a way that just felt repetitive; for instance the entire start of the film felt like I was watching The Bourne Supremacy and it meant I wasn't initially hooked and the film really had to work to keep me engaged and entertained. I also thought the storyline about the phone company being tied to surveillance agencies was a bit too obvious and in your face, I miss subtle plots within spy films.

Alicia Vikander, who played Heather Lee, sadly felt a bit redundant in this film; all Vikander really provided was a role for Jones to bounce his dialogue off of. Vincent Cassel, who played the Asset, was little more than a glorified henchman; the tried to give this role more depth than past hitmen characters by giving him an actual backstory and motivations but Cassel didn't have the acting chops to convey this. Julia Stiles, who played Nicky Parsons, gave a very bland performance; the film didn't really use Stiles in an effective way by killing her off the way they did. Riz Ahmed, who played Aaron Kalloor, was a rather weak performer to be leading the surveillance storyline; Ahmed was by no means a good fit for the Bourne series due to his tendency towards playing very blunt and humourous characters. Ato Essandoh, who played Craig Jeffers, literally had no reason to be in this film; in a movie bogged down with henchmen type characters it was tiring seeing yet another get given too much screen time. Scott Shepherd, who played Director NI Edwin Russell, felt like a rather weak character; this image the audience was given really didn't fit with the nature of his role so this can be pinned to either bad writing or Shepherd's lousy performance. Bill Camp, who played Malcolm Smith, has become a name I've started to recognise as the token bad actor in any given film he's in; Camp's weak screen presence really makes him the weak link of some amazing scenes. Vinzenz Kiefer, who played Christian Dassault, felt like a ridiculous character for this film; Kiefer played the character too much like a villain out of a superhero film or a cartoon and you just could not take him seriously. Gregg Henry, who played Richard Webb, really did not make much of an impact as Bourne's father; the was nowhere near enough focus put upon this role and even when he was onscreen Henry gave a rather lazy performance.