Bourne's greatest hits

"You're never going to find any peace. Not till you admit to yourself who you really are."

Some if not most action movies tend to rely on exciting but cliched fundamentals to attract audiences while others benefit from having a charismatic lead actor play the hero. The Bourne franchise is viewed by many as Matt Damon's most iconic role and for good reason; they're some of the best action films around and they've gotten better with each installment. It's understandable why Universal wanted to keep the franchise going with The Bourne Legacy; the perplexing fourth film that didn't feature either Damon or the titular Bourne at all which left many wondering how you can continue a series' story when Ultimatum, the third film of the series, was meant to be the closing chapter in Bourne's odyssey. To be precise, Legacy is considered a side-story that runs parallel to the events that took place in Ultimatum, and in all fairness Jeremy Renner wasn't too bad as the lead protagonist and gets an A for effort but let's be real: you can't make a Bourne movie without Damon. Universal took a while (9 years!) to figure that out and now we finally have a direct continuation to Bourne's story simply titled Jason Bourne. It's been 10 years since Bourne exposed Operation Blackbriar from the previous film, going off the grid and into hiding. We find the amnesiac black ops agent moving from place to place near the Albanian border where he partakes in illegal fight rings to get by. Meanwhile, in Reykjavik, Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles), works with a whistleblower to hack into the CIA's mainframe server where she uncovers another program like Blackbriar that the agency is starting up, including files about Richard Webb, Bourne's father, and his recruitment into Treadstone. Nicky locates Bourne and brings it to his attention that although he may have recovered his memories, he still doesn't know the circumstances about his evident recruitment into Treadstone. How does one follow up on one of the best trilogies like the Bourne series and then release a "side-quel" like The Bourne Legacy to further complicate the story's canon? Well, first you disregard the fourth film by not referring to anything about it at all, then you take the best aspects of the previous three entries and blend them together to create an amalgamation of what fans loved about the series and what made it work. This is exactly what Jason Bourne feels like; a love letter to the series and reminding us that there are a rare few films that can rival the franchise in both its' quality and enthrallment. Now having said that, the film doesn't quite feel "new" in the the terms of storytelling; to reiterate, the film borrows several factors from previous installments, such as Bourne recovering key details from his hazy memory, a conspiracy lingering in the story's background, a close-quarter combat scene to even a climatic car chase sequence which I'm starting to believe is now a staple feature for the series. None of this is bad; on the contrary, it's all done exceptionally well which is why I'm willing overlook this minor rehashing. My only concern is if, if the series does keep going from there, I just hope they don't keep reusing the same stuff we've seen before; otherwise the series will start to lose its' grace. However, if the series does end here (which I'm neither for or against), then in the least it goes out with a major hurrah.

​-Reviewed by Razor, 8/1/16