Jason Bourne (2016) review

review

After watched the movie, I had a habit of googling to see what people review about the film. Overall, as always, the critics always give a very high-demand for any movies. They complained abt the movie a lot, about the plot, about the shaking camera, about the fighting scenes are not clearly demonstrated, and make audience hard to follow.

For me, the movie did meet my expectation, these are why

When we talked about Jason Bourne, we talked about Matt Damon and Director Paul Greengrass. They made a great team. Matt Damon acting is always a plus point, and in this Jason Bourne sequel, we’ve seen him again after 9 years. Though he’s getting much older, he’s still in very good shape, and his skill and speed do not change at all. Jason Bourne is always about ‘efficiency’, he hit the opponents hard and fast, they get beaten down even before they realize. And whatever things around him can be used as a weapon. People love that, it what makes Bourne different from James Bond (always in suit with a short gun, glass of martini and women), or Ethan Hunt (doing the impossible physical things with hi-tech gears)… And in this movie, again, the ‘efficiency’ strength of Bourne is excellently demonstrated again. Though we have not seen him using stuff around him as weapons anymore, but that can be fine, as long as we can still see the hard and fast punch from Bourne.

The plot is simple but exciting. Off course, you don’t need a complicated movie to digest in just more than 2 hour when you are looking for entertainment and relaxation after a tiring working week. It’s not clear from the beginning why Bourne is in the dessert, fighting with the bigger men around him, beating them down with just 1 punch. Is he angry, or he needs to earn a living, or he needs to fight in order to remember his past, or what…we don’t know. And we don’t know why Nicky Parson hacked to the CIA, and then find information about Bourne, and then, except all the danger, she just went out to find Bourne to let him know about his past, finally she was shot dead by an assassin. We don’t know why, was it b/c she had a special feeling for Bourne, or why she had to risk her life like that…nobody knows…And why Heather Lee trusted in him, even though they never knew each other before. Why, from the beginning Bourne just wanted to know about his past, why his father who was initiated this project but did not let him know, and then later on what motivated him to change his objective to taking down the CIA institution, who might harm the society by following every moves of the people in the society, we don’t know why, and many other scenes needed to make deeper. But overall, the script was delivered just fine. And I felt excited for every scenes of the film.

The fighting scenes are good and well prepared. The camera is shaking intentionally, I guessed, because making film with hand-held camera is the strength of Director Paul Greengrass. And also the shaky camera is executed in a very good manner which makes the audience feel the thrill of the movie, the up-beat of all the action. There are 2 scenes in the movie that made me feel like I was watching Fast & Furious. 1st is the scene where the Assassin drove the car to chase the motorbike of Bourne and Nicky right in the center of the demonstration in Greece, 2nd is the racing scene when Bourne was after the Assassin in his stolen police car. And I felt like the car blew away all the other cars on the street. That was really fascinating.

Other characters work fine in this movie, Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander and Vincent Cassel (the assassin) play very professional and fulfill their roles in the movie.

The film end on the flat note, leave the audience the question whether Bourne will be back to CIA to serve the country or he will serve the country in his way, that means in the dark. Overall, I gave the movie 4 out of 5.