Dan R
My personal favourite from the franchise, a good story to wrap up the franchise, stunts were great, story was just as good.
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
05/08/24
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Aaron B
First of all, Paul Greengrass seriously needs to invest in a steady cam. The whole movie is unwatchably shaky... especially chases and fights. It's impossible to track with the action, so it has the opposite of the desired effect.
As much as I like Matt Damon and the Bourne premise, this is not a good movie. They really needed to hire a technical consultant to help with dialogue... "Use SQL to corrupt the database!", "Enhance!"... there are constant eye rollers like that.
And every opportunity for a character to do something human or say something clever is conspicuously passed over.
Just enjoy the first 2 movies from this franchise for what they were. (And the Jeremy Renner one isn't bad.)
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/09/24
Full Review
Tony S
One of the best in the Jason Bourne series. Tommy Lee Jones is the evil head of the CIA who wants to kill Bourne. Like an earlier episode, Jason has a friend in high places. As always, Bourne prevails.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/04/24
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Jason P
Terrible end to the franchise.
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
01/11/24
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Joy B
Unwatchable. Painfully bad acting and dialogue. Same old plot. Very different feel to the other films. Don't waste your time.
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
11/19/23
Full Review
Johannes L
"Jason Bourne" is the kind of movie a studio needs to make before the executives realize it's time to let a franchise go. There's no crying on the screen here, but I bet the goodbye broke some hearts in the finance department.
Amnesia has been one of the most effective, but simultaneously one of the tackiest plot devices ever since Dory couldn't seem to remember which fin was up. The earlier Bourne movies usually covered up the awkwardness of such heavy handed story machinery with their signature handheld bravado. The trick, and the joy, was to throw so much haphazard fisticuffs into the audience's face that hopefully there wouldn't be too much questioning of the various ridiculous assumptions about the limits of human physique, the nature of any secret service, or even the authenticity of the various locales. (As a former citizen of Switzerland, I had to laugh out loud about what passed for "Zurich" in the first installment. Trust me, not one element was accurate.)
The parts of those movies that have aged the least gracefully are those moments in which the hero, usually not bothered by the most devastating punches, twists up his face in agony as a piece of the puzzle re-enters his mind. The memories, they hurt!
Now, there's not all that much left for Jason Bourne to piece back together. A father-son tragedy, wedged into the backstory, is supposed to create the sort of revenge-inducing trauma that keeps this energizer bunny running and gunning.
And on the side of the almighty agency that created the master killer in the first place, we have, once again, a corrupt higher-up with lots to cover up. This time the sinister exec is Tommie Lee Jones, whose face looks more and more like it would much rather take a nap than act out another scheme. The world-weariness of his eye region stands in strange contrast to his relentless string-pulling. I guess he really wants to make sure that retirement won't be overshadowed by any bad stuff coming out.
Jason Bourne hasn't found wisdom or peace either. Certainly not around women. Ever since the first movie's love interest was sacrificed early in the second one, he either gets them killed or at the very least causes them a whole heap of trouble in the workplace.
Female characters have usually been slightly less hard-assed operatives within the machinery he's trying to escape and/or de-mask. Their function has been to provide the conflicted outcast with enough temptation to consider turning himself in, until they too realize what a shitty company they're really working for, at which point they tend to end up helping Bourne out.
Here, a fresh young woman with unclear intentions is stirred into the mix, played by the very earnest Alicia Vikander. It's not realistic that Jason will ever again experience actual romance, let alone a long term thing. That hasn't worked out for a revenge machine on the run. So the closest Damon's character comes to relating to girls is trying to find out if he can trust them enough to let them help him escape the current pickle. After that, it's game over for the relationship.
And there you have it. That's all it takes in the way of tent posts, and frantic action has to do the rest of the work. And action is often hectic, sometimes sloppy and always edited into the visual equivalent of an epileptic seizure in these films. Fight scenes have the improvised messy glory of a drunken bum fight, except that the bums in this case have been either genetically enhanced, trained to be ferocious killers, or, ideally, both.
Vincent Cassel was brilliant in many French movies, most notably "La Haine", and he does do hatred very well. You see, it's not enough to have another super-fighter chase our boy, there needs to be a terminator-like termination programmed into that opponent. So "The Asset" is not simply an agent told to take Bourne out, he is really gung-ho to do so because of some stuff in the past. Done! Now the chase is sufficiently emotional, and the fights get extra fist-clenchy. That Asset is a real asshat.
Damon is no longer a kid. Still, for the purpose of roles like this, he has the ability to get into the sort of shape needed to pull off the fights and the running and the reckless driving. But with a more seasoned Jason Bourne, the question becomes more and more obvious: Can't this guy just take it down a notch?
Of course, his alma mater still needs to be punished and cleansed of all the weasels who abuse its graduates. But man, you've shown that you know how to find exquisite locations for relaxation. I would have loved to see a fully retired Jason Bourne make the same realization the audience is left with after this film: It's really time to hang it up.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
11/07/23
Full Review
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