Jason Bourne – still fighting back after all these years!

Robert Ludlum – novelist, found his Bourne thrillers were part of the big name he made for himself in life.  Though he arrived at an unsavoury final chapter in his life and mysteries surround his family too, Ludlum’s Jason Bourne has won hearts and support worldwide as the fifth in the series of features has now graced British screens. Jeremy Renner starred in just one Bourne film, the others all feature Matt Damon who has matured gracefully and still sports a physique and profile which defy his years and probably inspires men to copy him?

The CIA’s Director Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones)  wants to pursue Bourne to extinction whilst his sidekick Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander) ultimately decides she wants to bring him in alive having firstly made a totally sinister decision to help hunt and kill him and anyone who supports him.  There is one death quite early on.  Assassin Assev played by Vincent Cassel surprises with a role where he is a man anyone would wish to avoid and who is ruthless and psychopathic, mean and menacing.  But Bourne would not be Bourne if these characters were not an integral part of the screenplay plot.  This film features scenes in Washington and Las Vegas, Tenerife, Berlin, Iceland, London, Rome, Lebanon (flashback) and Spain.  Though this Bourne saga was spawned not by Ludlum but by ghostwriters, the usual formula featuring Treadstone and this time a shady good guy,  Aaron Kalloor (Riz Ahmed), is followed, where we cannot help but hope that Bourne will survive to face another day on the run yet with an air of being innocent by self defence and only acting on orders all his grown baleful days.

The fight scenes are typically overblown and the car chases are somewhat predictable and in some places the film descends into what one can only fairly term a “shitty shoot out”  of the type we as audiences are wholly familiar with whenever we go to action movies, but as a whole, this fifth long-awaited Bourne has a few nice surprises and of course I can let you know that Bourne does in fact survive whereas a well loved character such as Gatsby in The Great Gatsby – with a dissimilar story granted, leaves no one expecting a sequel when he is shot dead in his own swimming pool. Such is my observance of stories where sequels are bringing in eager viewers to the box office.

Enjoy

Penny Nair Price