Jason Bourne Review

What I liked: Let's get this out of the way first. If for some reason I cannot obtain the batmobile I want to drive Jason Bourne's car. Or maybe I want his car for daytime driving and save the batmobile for evenings and special occasions. If the car is too expensive I will settle for just the tires which seem to be pretty much everything proof. No, he didn't drive backwards off a building this time but he did have enough serious collisions to more than compensate. The sedan fared quite well considering it was going up against a tank. I really appreciated that all the hacker commands were readily intelligible and consisted of a single line "decrypt files, remove firewall, authorize my fake passport." If you thought Jack Ryan's hacking was good in shadow recruit (he hacked a very secure computer using an electrical outlet), you will be terrified to know the secure computer could be hacked using a cell phone in the same building. Wires are for wimps. Take that Ethan Hunt with your cool repelling routine, you should have just dangled a cell phone through the air vent. I think Bourne needs a new hobby. He is moonlighting as a prize fighter who drops his opponent with a single punch. As far as I can tell, when he is bored he stands around and lets them beat on him for a while. I mean take up cross stitch or something. Join the circus! He could have a really good disappearing act. His boxing escapades did spark an idea for a Rocky Bourne crossover film though. I liked that while Bourne can accurately predict the location of a sniper and the number of bad guys chasing him, he is unable to predict fairly obvious plot devices. I am glad to find something that I can do better than Jason Bourne but do wonder if he ever watched spy movies. Next time I'm an assassin recovering from amnesia, I think my first move will be to have a spy movie marathon. That way I will be able to anticipate the evil intelligence agency, the sneak attacks, the bad guys with a grudge from my past, and the fact that there are in the world n+1 spies of note where n=the number of countries involved and 1 is me.

What I didn't: The first three Bourne movies had phenomenal choreography and helped things feel intense with tight shots and some shakiness. This entire film was tight shots and shaky and intentionally out of focus, even for things that didn't need to feel particularly stressful. I spent a lot of time shouting in my head "AAAA too close! Too close!" and expecting to smack into the actors. I usually don't mind some intense shaky camera action but there was enough in this film to give me a headache and make me feel kind of sick. The shake and lack of focus was particularly annoying when there were words to be reading. All of this might be better on a TV; maybe the big screen just accentuated it. I do feel like at some point one of the interview questions for the head of the CIA should be "are you evil?" I think it would save everyone a lot of time since as far as I know, with the exception of when Jack Ryan ran the CIA, there has never been a non evil head of the CIA in a movie. If one insists on hiring an evil CIA director, The director of the NSA should at least be competent. I am under the impression that this one had had his brain replaced with mashed potatoes. Clearly nothing could go wrong with having your final showdown in a convention full of spy gear. This was both a terrible plan and disappointingly under utilized by the master spies roaming the building. Also for future reference it is a bad idea to try and whack an assassin over the head if you are not an assassin. It is probably a bad idea if you are an assassin too, maybe they tell you these things in assassin school.

Who should watch this? People who love Bourne movies

Would I watch it again? good to see once, if the shaking is better on a small screen I might watch it again.