It's the Bourne revival: Matt Damon is Bourne again. After an unsuccessful attempt to transfer the franchise to Jeremy Renner in 2012's "The Bourne Legacy," Damon has returned to his most iconic role as the brainwashed CIA super-soldier. He's the real deal, the Sean Connery to Renner's George Lazenby, but do we really need another of these films?
When Damon first appeared in "The Bourne Identity" in 2002, he seemed an unlikely action hero, and Doug Liman's direction never fully convinced. Things only clicked when Paul Greengrass took over for the 2004 sequel, "The Bourne Supremacy," and 2007's masterful "The Bourne Ultimatum." The director's immersive filmmaking style, full of handheld camerawork and rapid-fire editing, has since become the default setting for Hollywood action flicks.
Such techniques may be over-familiar at this point, but it's still a genuine pleasure to see them used so well. Greengrass is like an old master returning to show his imitators how it's meant to be done. There are a couple of extended action sequences in "Jason Bourne" — a pursuit during a riot in Athens, a destructive car chase through the streets of Las Vegas — that are executed with such aplomb, they pretty much justify the admission price by themselves.
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