JASON BOURNE (2016) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

JASON BOURNE (2016) movie

Genre               |   Spy-Fi Action

Classification   |   M

Running time   |   123 minutes

Released         |   28 July 2016

cast

Matt Damon ... Jason Bourne
Tommy Lee Jones ... Robert Dewey
Alicia Vikander ... Heather Lee
Vincent Cassel ... Asset
Julia Stiles ... Nicky Parsons
Riz Ahmed ... Aaron Kalloor

director

Paul Greengrass

writer

​Paul Greengrass ... (written by) &
Christopher Rouse ... (written by)
 
Robert Ludlum ... (based on characters created by)

cinematographer

​Barry Ackroyd

music

David Buckley
John Powell

film editor

Christopher Rouse ​

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box office result

Worldwide             $​415,484,914  

Australia                 $​​​​​​16,744,094

North America        $​​​ 162,434,410  

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the best dialogue

Jason Bourne: I know who I am. I remember everything.

Nicky Parsons: Remembering everything doesn't mean you know everything.

CIA Director Robert Dewey: You're never going to find any peace. Not until you admit to yourself who you really are.

Jason Bourne: The next bullet's in your head!

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JASON BOURNE (2016) IMAGES

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Posters

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JASON BOURNE (2016) STORY SYNOPSIS

​It's been 10 years since Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) walked away from the agency that trained him to become a deadly weapon. Hoping to draw him out of the shadows, CIA director Robert Dewey assigns hacker and counterinsurgency expert Heather Lee to find him. Lee suspects that former operative Nicky Parsons is also looking for him. As she begins tracking the duo, Bourne finds himself back in action battling a sinister network that utilizes terror and technology to maintain unchecked power.

JASON BOURNE (2016) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 27 July 2016
​Pop Movee Rating ⭐⭐⭐

JASON BOURNE is a notch below previous series entries as Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne struggles to find relevance in a world where his memory has been restored but the ghosts of his past still haunt him. Much like the central character, JASON BOURNE’s story unfolds with a dizzying amount of action but very little underlying meaning. BOURNE ULTIMATUM scribe Christopher Rouse and Director Paul Greengrass co-wrote this latest film and their devotion to the character is admirable but an excess of contrivance with the story’s central characters stretches credibility beyond breaking point.

The film’s Third Act all but collapses under the metaphorical weight of too many plot points converging under the neon lights of Las Vegas and, even though there’s the distinct chance of further adventures, JASON BOURNE producers need to give serious consideration to a reboot that has more at stake than the central character continuously questioning his sense-of-self!

JASON BOURNE opens with the return of Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles), the other mainstay of the Matt Damon BOURNE films. The former CIA operative is now a female version of Julian Assange; hell-bent on hacking and revealing US government secrets about top-secret projects like Treadstone (the one in which “Jason Bourne” was created). Nicky all-too-quickly and conveniently locates Bourne in Athens, punishing himself by way of brutal street fighting bouts. Somewhat clumsily (and quite unbelievably given the characters experience in the previous three films), Nicky has been tracked by the CIA’s Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander), a top-ranking cybercrime fighter.

Lurking in the background is Agency Director Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones), playing a rather cliched iteration of “You don't know what you're dealing with” Bourne-hunter, who exists purely to tell everyone how terrible the central character is and what a danger he represents. Dewey quickly activates the “Asset” (Vincent Cassell), who operates as an extension of Dewey and is a throwback to earlier versions of series assassins played by Clive Owen and Karl Urban.

Arriving in Athens at the height of what appears to be all-out civil war, the Asset, within a few minutes,  locates Bourne and Nicky in all the chaos and proceeds to chase them through the heavy but ineffectual police presence. Despite shaking their pursuer, the omnipotent CIA still manage to have their man take a couple of pot shots from a rooftop. By this stage of the film it's become very clear that JASON BOURNE doesn't even have an internal logic that dictates what is and isn't reasonable in the scheme of the BOURNE universe.

Where JASON BOURNE works is in its Director’s ability to get his cameraman, in this case THE HURT LOCKER’s Barry Ackroyd, in nice and close to the action. Previous BOURNE films have distinguished themselves in this area and JASON BOURNE is no different. Much of the action is captured from a first person point-of-view perspective. Greengrass hasn’t used a lot of long shots in previous BOURNE movies and this new film is no exception.

Characters are captured in medium or close quarters so the audience gets a good look at what’s running through the character’s mind as the scene unfolds. Surprisingly for an Action genre film, JASON BOURNE works best in its quieter moments where silent expressions say just as much about a character’s intent as their words.

Despite some pretty cliched writing for his character, Tommy Lee Jones is especially skilled at conveying what his thinking with the barest of expressions. He’s made a career out of filling quiet spaces with meaning and he delivers a solid performance in a role that, in the hands of a lesser actor, could have become one-note very quickly.

Alicia Vikander continues her run of strong supporting performances and her character arc is the strongest in the film.

In spite of some solid acting and attempt by the writers to undertake a soft reboot of the series, JASON BOURNE brings very little new to the series mythology. The film’s Macguffin is a contrivance that represents a regression for Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne relative to where events finished in HE BOURNE ULTIMATUM back in 2007 and some viewers will feel like they’ve seen it all before. There may very well be another BOURNE after this one, but, much like the sentiment echoed by Bourne himself, audiences will have to have a long hard think about returning to his universe unless there’s some dramatic change in his circumstance.

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