Bourne's back, and he's ... well, nine years older and eking out an existence as a bare-knuckle fighter on the Greek-Armenian border, allowing plenty of time for tortured flashbacks to his earlier adventures for those in need of a recap.
JASON BOURNE
Director: Paul Greengrass
Cast: Matt Damon, Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander, Vincent Cassel, Julia Stiles, Riz Ahmed
Rating: (M)
Three stars (out of five)
He's soon coerced out of hiding when a former contact hacks into some classified files that suggest his father had a role to play in his recruitment.
Naturally, this alerts the CIA (headed by a grizzled Tommy Lee Jones) to his whereabouts, leading to yet another hi-tech, cat-and-mouse chase across a string of picturesque locations.
The fourth (or is it fifth?) entry in this series more or less sticks to the same formula as previous instalments.
Director Greengrass' signature shaky cam is again employed from the get-go, this time with mixed results (it may severely affect your enjoyment if you suffer from a queasy disposition), drawing you brilliantly into the action scenes but serving as a major distraction elsewhere.
Not that there's much talking to get in the way of the car chases.
Damon is said to have only 25 lines of dialogue here, and while an agonised soliloquy may have added some extra depth, it's not really what these movies are about.
There are hints of grander ideas scattered throughout, such as an early sequence set during a riotous anti-austerity march in Athens, and some timely commentary on the dangers of the surveillance state, but mostly it's just a good, honest action flick, even if you've seen it all before.
- Jeremy Quinn
