Jason Bourne Review

Jason Bourne is set 10 years after the previous film and follows the further adventures and spy-giri of the titular hero.

Normally if there is a gap within sequels, I binge watch the older movies to get caught up on the story. I have seen the Bourne trilogy but it’s been a while. For example I re-watched X-men first class and days of future past before Apocalypse came out and so on…

But this time I purposely kept away from the Bourne trilogy. A lot of people today will not remember anything in those films. I wanted to see how standalone this film is…

The good news is, you need not see ANY of the previous films at all. The story is very self-contained. Everything that happens makes sense within the context of the film and for new audiences its not confusing (one of the biggest issues with X-men Apocalypse).

Matt Damon is consistent as Bourne, who is no longer memory wiped and confused. He is much more confident as his memory is all back and he is kicking ass left, right and center.

As is expected in these movies, something the CIA does or did in the past runs afoul with Mr. Bourne and then he goes on a rampage to resolve the issue.

The movies pacing is good, acting is decent all around and the score gives the movie a good sense of flow.

Now coming to the negatives of this film.

This film is EXTREMELY clichéd and predictable. The film makers have tried VERY hard to not be condescending to audiences and to not spoon feed them information, but somehow the film is still very predictable.

I went to see this film with a friend who isn’t that well versed with Spy flicks in general, even he kept predicting dialogs before they happened.

Now this might be my personal experience, but I feel movies such as these have a very limited space to play within and to keep the tone and feel consistent, they have to constrict the dialogs and what varieties they can go with. What it means is, they have run out of options and creativity with the scenes and dialogs.

This hurts the film a bit, there are no good twists in the plot and it’s too linear and not very exciting or edge of the seat.

The fans of the series will not be disappointed but there is nothing to put this movie over the top either.

This would be ranked the lowest in the Bourne series. This is NOT counting the terrible, Bourne Legacy. That is the worst film in this franchise.

But kudos to them for not keeping any plot points alive for a sequel. They sort of wrap up this movie within itself.

I wish I could see a team up, Avengers style for Jason Bourne, Ethan hunt and James Bond in a Oceans 11 type spy caper. Now that would set the box office on fire !

Rating : 6.5/10. A decent time at the movies with this above average Spy flick. It’s way better than James Bond and no-where near as fun as Mission Impossible.