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Laramie Movie Scope:
Jason Bourne

Bourne to run, and fight

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by Robert Roten, Film Critic
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August 2, 2016 -- The latest Jason Bourne movie, the fifth in the highly successful film series about a troubled government assassin searching for the truth about his past, is a pretty good mix of drama and action.

Matt Damon, who first brought the character created by Robert Ludlum to life in “The Bourne Identity” (2002) is back in this film, after skipping the fourth film (which starred Jeremy Renner). Bourne has aged and become both world weary and cautious in the years since his last adventure.

He is contacted by a former member of Treadstone, the CIA's secret assassination program, Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles, reprising her role from previous Bourne films) who is on the run after hacking into the CIA computers. She has discovered a sinister plot to engineer a back door into a Facebook-like computer system called Deep Dream. This will enable the CIA to spy on anyone using the system.

Bourne advises Nicky to keep her head down and stay away from the CIA, but the CIA targets both Nicky and Bourne for death, so Bourne springs into action after discovering that the people targeting him were also involved in the death of his father. He has questions and wants answers.

Bourne is after the same men targeting him, a deadly assassin (played by Vincent Cassel of “Black Swan”) and the assassin's boss, CIA Director Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones). A wild card in the deck is cyber warfare expert Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander of “Ex Machina”) who is in charge of capturing or killing Bourne. She has her own agenda.

The film is directed by Paul Greengrass, who has now directed three of the five Bourne films. Greengrass is an accomplished director, aided by the energetic editing of Christopher Rouse, who has worked with Greengrass before in the Bourne films. The action scenes are professionally done, but the fight scenes are more gritty this time around. In earlier Bourne films the hand-to-hand combat was smooth, electric, almost pretty, said to be a combination of Kali, Jeet Kune Do and Capoeira martial arts styles.

Other than that, this film is solidly in the Bourne tradition, including the same visual style and the same hectic action music, right down to yet another version of “Extreme Ways” by Moby, playing over the credits again. Bourne has become a franchise, and a lot of the credit for that has to be given to Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass, not to mention Robert Ludlum, for creating such a compelling character, a man searching for his identity in a world trying to reduce everyone to a number.

This Bourne movie is a bit more loose than the others, not as tightly constructed, but the action scenes are effective enough, the characters are believable and the story is compelling. It works well enough. This film rates a C+.

Click here for links to places to buy or rent this movie in digital formats, or to buy the soundtrack, posters, books, even used videos, games, electronics and lots of other stuff. I suggest you shop at least two of these places before buying anything. Prices seem to vary continuously. For more information on this film, click on this link to The Internet Movie Database. Type in the name of the movie in the search box and press enter. You will be able to find background information on the film, the actors, and links to much more information.

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Copyright © 2016 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.
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Robert Roten can be reached via e-mail at my last name at lariat dot org. [Mailer button: image of letter and envelope]

(If you e-mail me with a question about this or any other movie or review, please mention the name of the movie you are asking the question about, otherwise I may have no way of knowing which film you are referring to)