Milking Jason Bourne

It's a classic case of over-milking. Jason Bourne, the fifth movie in the Bourne series, (if you also consider the just-average Bourne Legacy starring Jeremy Renner as one among them,) is a huge letdown due to a single factor- greed. I was much excited to watch it when it was announced. The director of Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum, Paul Greengrass was not expected to do a sequel and Matt Damon was reluctant to do it without him. That's why they made one sequel without the star. So I expected something grand when they united again. Alas it was late when I realised that the purpose was to serve the greed of a Hollywood studio.

Now, Jason Bourne is watchable if we doesn't know it is a sequel to the much superior Ultimatum. It has decent stunts and some chases, an OK plot that binds it and some pretty good acting from Damon and Tommy Lee Jones. But when Ultimatum comes into picture, these factors aren't enough. The tag-line of the movie is "You know his name." The main issue with the movie was that he knew his name and most of the things about him, which kind of spoiled it.

In the previous movies, the suspense was so good that more than Bourne, we wanted to know about his past. The pacing was so tight that I can still watch all three movies back to back. (In-fact I did it last year.) In Jason Bourne, the suspense factor was pathetic. We could detect the twists from miles away. And the dilemma and confusion of Bourne wasn't evident anywhere. The plot looked totally padded up in order to achieve a respectable running time.

The pacing is severly lacking and the high tension pursuits of previous movies are just shadow-selves in this one. When Ultimatum came, the shaky camera action was a novelty and in that movie it beautifully complemented the shaky self image of Bourne. But here it becomes just another yawn inducing worn out gimmick.

The climax was the worst. The fight was drawn out for another long fifteen minutes after all secrets were let out and justice was served. It was an awesome 'unnecessity'. I was remembering the climax of Speed 2: Cruise Control while watching it, which was also fun but without any point.