Jason Bourne opened in July 2016 and earned about 162 million domestically and about 415 million worldwide. Matt Damon returns to the franchise after being absent from The Bourne Legacy which starred Jeremy Renner. Julia Stiles who starred in the first three Bourne moves also reprises her role as Nicki Parsons. The film also stars Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander, Vincent Cassel, Riz Ahmed, and Ato Essandoh.

I thought Jason Bourne was a good movie. I have seen the first three Bourne movies. I have not seen The Bourne Legacy. At some point I will get around to watching it. I do not know if The Bourne Legacy is required viewing, but given no one from that film is in Jason Bourne, I figured it was not necessary. It had impressive action pieces in this one especially in the final act of the film. The fight scenes have always been top notch. One thing that was always unique with the Bourne Franchise is its hand to hand combat fight scenes. A lot of action movies use gadgets or superpowers once superhero movies really took off. This movie came out the same year as Captain America: Civil War, Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, X-Men: Apocalypse, Star Trek Beyond, and many more. Those of the films that came out before this movie. Doctor Strange and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story came out later that year. It is nice that the movie stuck to what works instead of upgrading it to having a lot of high tech gadgets and gizmos.

The cast does a solid job. Tommy Lee Jones makes a good villain. He plays CIA Director Robert Dewey. A lot of the roles Tommy Lee Jones play have a tendency to be characters who are very serious. His role in Men in Black where he is a good guy was super serious whereas Will Smith was the fun and not so serious guy. As the film progressed by the end, I was really routing for Jason Bourne to get revenge on Director Dewey. Alicia Vikander also did a good job as Heather Lee who works under Director Dewey. There is a lot of mystery with her character. Throughout the movie I was not sure what her deal was. Even the ending left it a little ambiguous on where she stood in the overall picture. Riz Ahmed played Aaron Kalloor who is a tech genius. He made some questionable choices in order to achieve his success. A minor thing, but I would have liked to have seen more of Aaron Kalloor. I am a fan of Riz Ahmed and I thought he did a really good job in the role which made me want to see more scenes with him. As always Matt Damon is perfect for the role of Jason Bourne. Matt Damon has been in tons of movies and other franchises specifically Ocean’s Eleven and its sequels. The fourth go around for Matt Damon and he is just as good as he was while headlining the first three movies. By the time this movie came out it had been about nine years since he last played the character. Even with that gap, you could never tell. Yes, he looked a little older since he was older when he filmed the movie but everything else was just right. I am surprised at this point that Matt Damon has not done more action movies because he is quite good at them. I am also surprised that currently he has not donned a superhero character for Marvel or DC or in general. That could always change. He has dipped himself in the water a little bit having small appearances in Deadpool 2, Thor: Ragnorak and Thor: Love and Thunder.  

At this point it is not known if there will be another Bourne movie. If there is the other question would be if it would be Matt Damon or Jeremy Renner’s character or both. Jason Bourne was successful, but it did make less than The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum but made more than The Bourne Legacy. I guess never say never. At the end of the day, I would think it would be up to both the director Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon in terms of them doing another one.

Jason Bourne is a solid action movie. At times the movie felt a little slow but once it got moving it had me on the edge of my seat. It was left open ended enough to continue the franchise. If they make another one, I would be interested in seeing where this goes next.