‘Jason Bourne’ Reviews Roundup: Matt Damon’s Return To Franchise Gets Mixed Reviews

Jason Bourne, the fourth film in the Bourne franchise starring Matt Damon, is debuting in theaters this weekend to mixed reviews.

Director Paul Greengrass, working from a screenplay he co-wrote with Christopher Rouse, opens Jason Bourne with the titular protagonist living off-the-grid, earning rent money by engaging in street fights. Unlike past installments, this time around Bourne has memory of his past. Eventually, he reunites with Nicky (Julia Stiles), who has left the CIA in favor of a hacking group working against the CIA. The CIA, headed by Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones) has a bright young star in Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander), who realizes that Nicky is now firmly on the other side and working with Bourne.

‘Jason Bourne’ Reviews

Critics who’ve given Jason Bourne positive reviews recommend the film as a return to form for the franchise, a sprawling action flick with impressive sequences and a narrative that pulls from the cyber security debates currently playing out on the world stage. For those less impressed with the latest Bourne movie, Jason Bourne fails to validate the resurrection of a franchise that had ended on a high note with 2007’s Bourne Ultimatum.

“Action remains the franchise’s prime objective. Working from a screenplay that he co-wrote with Christopher Rouse, director Paul Greengrass has come up with a post-Snowden film that delivers nonstop thrills. Damon is terrific as the impressively skilled yet poignantly haunted Bourne. Jones is malevolence personified as Dewey. And Vikander lends a steely confidence to Lee. The final scene strongly implies that we haven’t seen the last of Jason Bourne. Bring it on.” – Calvin Wilson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Bourne used to be an anguished amnesiac. Now he remembers who he is, but this fourth episode of the franchise forgot to make him human.Instead of using the last pieces of his self-discovery to open him up, the film makes him more tightly shut down than ever, a relentlessly grim avenger who wants to expose yet another nefarious program being hatched by a CIA that aspires to “full-spectrum surveillance,” or watching everyone all the time. The chases are exciting, up to a point; the director, Paul Greengrass, is a virtuoso filmmaker. But oh, how they do vroom on.” – Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal

“Jason Bourne” is the best action thriller of the year so far, with a half-dozen terrific chase sequences and fight scenes. At one point the action swings to Vegas, and while some of what transpires is almost cartoonishly over-the-top, it’s great fun.Damon is outstanding as the tightly wound, perpetually restless and conflicted Jason Bourne. […] Jason Bourne” doesn’t have the fresh kick of the first “Bourne” film from nearly a decade and a half ago — but Damon is a more accomplished actor than he was in 2002, and the more we know about this character, the more we feel for him, and it’s a damn treat to see him again after all these years.” – Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times

“In its effort to bring the story into the modern world of Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks, with illegal domestic surveillance and privacy rights locked in a death struggle, “Jason Bourne” hops around the globe and across inessential subplots. Its narrative hopscotch loses the tight personal focus that made its antihero so compelling, and saps the cinematic urgency that made the earlier movies so robust. Despite some action sequences that are poetry in motion, and a high-profile cast teaming Damon with fellow Oscar winners Alicia Vikander and Tommy Lee Jones, it feels like an average celluloid spy film at best.” – Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune

Jason Bourne is currently in wide release.