Jason Bourne

Bourne is back with a vengeance as Matt Damon resumes the role that launched a game-changing franchise and influenced everything from Bond to Batman. The Bourne Legacy (2012) featured Jeremy Renner's ass-kicking agent on the run, but fans still pined for Damon's amnesiac assassin, even though he discovered his real identity at the end of 2007's The Bourne Ultimatum. Here, a morose Damon (making Daniel Craig look positively chatty) is under the radar earning chump-change from bare-knuckle fights on the Greek border. However, he is soon drawn to Athens for a crucial rendezvous with a fellow runaway spy (series regular Julia Stiles), who has unearthed a secret from his family's past. Once in the Greek capital, the breathless, relentlessly exciting style of the action franchise explodes in spectacular fashion (thanks to an incendiary city-wide riot), sending our hero on a globe-spanning pursuit of the truth that climaxes on the streets of Las Vegas. Ranged against him are Alicia Vikander's hotshot analyst (but is she friend or foe?), a stone-cold killer (Vincent Cassel) and Tommy Lee Jones's obdurate CIA chief. Director Paul Greengrass is back behind the camera, too, and brilliantly marshals the slickly edited action while thrusting Bourne into a post-Snowden world of dodgy dealings and invasive government surveillance. Admittedly, the star's fourth outing has familiar narrative beats, but thanks to immersive, breakneck action set in stunning locations, a terrific cast and the magnetic presence of Damon, it's still a case of Bourne supremacy.