Review: Jason Bourne (2016)

A couple of years ago I was hunting the aisles of CeX (a second-hand entertainment store in the UK) for bargains when my husband called me over, he’d found a box-set of the Bourne trilogy for something silly like £5. When I told him I’d never seen them I was practically dragged back home (after paying, of course) and forced to watch all 3 over the course of the weekend. Admittedly, I didn’t know what I was missing out on, I really enjoyed those movies! Not so much the Jeremy Renner addition, but come on, it’s not a Bourne movie without Matt Damon.

I wasn't looking forward to this AT ALL, my review may reflect that fact more than it should!!  I don't overly rate the Bourne films if i'm honest, I never found the stories particularly engaging and the action was always too fast paced to actually see what was going on!

That said, I’ve been looking forward to Jason Bourne (2016) since the first trailer came out. (ha! could we be any more different!) So many of this summer’s blockbusters have given away everything in the trailer, and this kept everything under wraps, it was all going to be a surprise. We panicked when we got to the cinema at the sight of the queue nearly reaching the door, but thankfully they all wanted to see Suicide Squad (poor them) so we lucked out.

I don’t know how much of the plot I want to explain here to be honest. Not for spoilers or anything, but surprises are nice, guys! Basically, Jason (Matt Damon) is in hiding in Greece playing fight club (but let’s not talk about that). Over in Iceland, Nicky (Julia Stiles) hacks into the CIA’s servers and copies all of their Black Ops files, which includes Treadstone and secret information about Jason Bourne’s past. Nicky is caught by CIA newcomer Heather (Alicia Vikander) who begins hunting Nicky and Jason down with the help of Director Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones).

Let’s face it, you don’t go into a Bourne movie expecting a complicated, intricate plot, you’re there for some action and thrills, and that’s what you get. 2 hours of a brooding, buff Matt Damon kicking ass and driving like a madman. Cue the biggest use of shaky-camera action I’ve ever seen. Don’t get me wrong, it works brilliantly, but when the audience is meant to be reading a text message on someone’s phone screen, hold the damn thing still! I can’t read when you’re shaking it like Taylor Swift dangit!  I was not impressed with the shaky-camera action, I felt like I had a bad case of vertigo, I needed a lie down after to recover!  I had no idea what was going on in the fight scenes because I couldn't see one person from the other, I was glad when someone got knocked down because it provided a short pause for me to get my bearings!

I wasn’t sure what to think of Alicia Vikander’s character at first, she was amazing in her 2015 movies and came across quite wooden in this to begin with, but towards the end of the movie I realised that’s how she was meant to be. Don’t mess with Bourne, Heather!  This is where I was impressed, I really love Alicia Vikander and she didn't disappoint me here.  I had know idea where her loyalties lay throughout the whole thing, obviously that was the story but she played the poker face so well I had even less chance of working out who the heck she was supporting.  I convinced myself at one point that she was Bourne's long lost sister from Beirut!

The one thing I was waiting for was the moment in the trailers where that riot truck just plows through traffic in Las Vegas. So. Much. Yes. That was my favourite action scene, made even better by the fact that Jason Bourne was driving a black Dodge as well. I’m not a car fanatic or anything, but on my honeymoon I was designated driver, and our hire car was a black Dodge Dart (we named him Terry) and I loved that car so much.  I was expecting to be really excited by the Vegas scene and on the edge of my seat but by that point I had given into boredom and was fidgeting like I desperately needed the loo (I didn't!) and I just wanted it to be over already.

The action was great in theory but the story didn't grab my attention so I just lost interest. If I don't care about the characters then I have no reason to care when they are being beaten to a pulp by someone!

So yeah, Jason Bourne was everything I wanted it to be. A bit of mid-week fun and perfect for letting the brain switch off and just enjoy a good action flick!

I can't really justify my dislike of this, I was just plain bored.  Too much like all the others, nothing new or exciting!

Review: Nightcrawler (2014)

Somehow, Nightcrawler just fell under my radar when it came out last year. I tend to avoid the cinema during October, I’m not a horror fan at all and if the screens aren’t full of horror films, they’re playing horror trailers! I’m just like ‘I came to watch Horrible Bosses 2*, why am I seeing trailers for Annabelle**?!. By the time I’d heard of Nightcrawler and knew what it was about, it had finished at the cinema. Pants! Thankfully, I got my hands on a copy in time for Jenna staying over for film night! I totally missed this at the cinema, I saw it on the side of a bus in December and got all excited until I noticed that it said October waaah!!

In Nightcrawler, a shockingly thin Jake Gyllenhaal plays the role of Lou Bloom, a guy desperate for a job who finds himself making a living out of filming horrific car crashes and crimes and then selling the footage to the news. Lou hires himself an apprentice, Rick (Riz Ahmed) to listen to the police radio and give directions to Lou. What starts out as already unsettling takes continuous turns for the worst as Lou’s greed for money grows.

I would blindly follow Jake Gyllenhaal into any film he made, but I would have watched this no matter who was the lead actor. The plot just sounded that good. In the beginning I felt sort of sorry for Lou, despite his joblessness he had the drive and the cheeky charisma to succeed, but it’s certainly unsettling to realise that this world that Lou finds himself in happens all the time in the real world.  The thought of this is terrifying, excuse me while I go and lock my front door!!

This is the kind of role that Jake Gyllenhaal just owns. He was brilliant in Donnie Darko, and I’ll happily watch any kind of thriller if he’s involved. Lou’s relationship with Rick was fascinating to watch as Lou would make a transition from Rick’s friendly and enthusiastic mentor to just completely losing it within a heartbeat. He was truly scary!  This is probably one of the best roles I have seen JG in, he owned it completely.  It was one of those roles where you forget who the actor is because you are just totally sold on the character.  Rene Russo really shone to me as well, the scenes of those two together were electric!

I found myself completely hooked and on edge throughout the whole film, as Lou crossed the line between a morally grey area to downright wrong. There’s a shot of Lou right at the very end of the film, and I won’t spoil it for you, but there’s something you spot that was in another scene ages before, and it suddenly dawns on you that even though you’ve seen Lou do some terrible things, there was so much more that he did that we as the audience never got to see.

I found this really entertaining (even if I have a few naps throughout oops!) and scary to be fair, I found some of the scenes quite disturbing and uncomfortable, was that just me?  The fact that people out there actually do this and potentially set up these situations and cause serious accidents and even deaths.  

My face at the very end was a mixture of shock and a grin at how awesome the whole thing was. There were a few quiet moments where not much happened but other than that, this would have been in my Top 2014 films for sure! Those moments were the odd ones where I had a little doze! ;-)

I don't think I thought as much as this as Allie (maybe because of my mini-naps!!) but I definitely enjoyed it and Gyllenhaal was at his best.

*It probably wasn’t Horrible Bosses

**Also probably not Annabelle. More likely the goat in the shower mobile phone advert. Was it EE or 3?