Review // Jason Bourne

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Fugitive amnesiac super-soldier Jason Bourne returns in this weekend’s Jason Bourne. If the departure from the “The Bourne Noun” title treatment is a welcome alteration, enjoy it, because it’s basically the only notable change in this newest effort from director Paul Greengrass. After nine years Matt Damon is back in the title role, having conveniently forgotten that film with Jeremy Renner ever existed. Unfortunately the new film is nothing but a by-the-number rehash of the three Renner-less films that came before.

We pick up with Bourne slugging it out in a boxing camp(?) on the Greek, Albanian border. It seems like he’s got himself a nice little life figured out punching guys for Euros; that is until Julia Stiles’ Nicky Parsons hacks a CIA computer then tries to contact him. She’s got her hands on Black Ops records, including new information about Bourne’s past. Information about his past is like crack to Bourne so out of hiding he comes, only to run into the CIA who tracked Nicky using malware in the computer. That dastardly CIA!

Off we go on another wild ride as Bourne is hunted by a grumpy old CIA director (Tommy Lee Jones), an ambitious, tech-savvy operative (Alicia Vikander) and a ruthless killer with a link to Bourne’s past (Vincent Cassel). If that sounds familiar well, yeah, who are you Jason Bourne? It’s all one big rehash of story tropes that have worked better in previous films, padded with numerous scenes of agents talking computer mumbo jumbo while typing quickly, and characters hurrying places looking nervous. The whole film boils down to three main action set pieces, and while the stunts are as thrilling and kinetic as ever, the in-between segments are dull, uninteresting exposition we barely pay attention since we know it will be covered in the next film’s opening montage.

All tension and mystery have been drained from the character of Bourne. Where once he was forced to thinking quickly on his feet and would surprise himself with his violent actions, now he’s forever three steps ahead of everyone and is virtually immortal. He’s gone full Bond. We don’t get a human moment from him the entire movie. Because of this the central conflict (a mysterious connection between Bourne’s father and the Treadstone program) fails to engage. We can’t imagine Bourne having a father. We can’t imagine Bourne doing anything but kicking ass and driving cars. We’re given no reason to think he does anything else.

The lone bright spots in the film are its new cast members Alicia Vikander and Riz Ahmed. Representing a new generation at the CIA, Vikander’s Heather Lee is an enjoyably ambiguous bad guy, rolling her eyes along with the audience as Tommy Lee Jones’ Robert Dewey orders another random group of CIA heavies to “take him out”. Her generation has seen the Bourne movies, she knows that won’t work. Riz Ahmed uses his limited screen time well as Aaron Kalloor, a Silicon Valley golden boy being blackmailed by the CIA as his new app-integration platform is set to launch. The focus on online privacy and the emerging power of big data is interesting and relevant, and Kalloor’s predicament is a believable look at how the government reaches its fingers into big tech. Unfortunately none of this ever really ties it into Bourne’s larger story.

You could chalk all this up to over-thinking some good clean fun if it were all that fun, but it’s not. The film’s best moments come in its first 20 minutes, and while a climactic Vegas car chase will get your blood pumping, it quickly grows as ridiculous as the city itself. It doesn’t help that cinematographer Barry Ackroyd must have looked at the earlier Bourne films and said “you call that shaky cam?” before drinking ten cups of coffee and jumping on a longboard with square wheels.

Anyone hoping Matt Damon’s return would mean a Bourne re-born will be sorely disappointed. Instead of taking the franchise in a bold new direction, the film is just a new name slapped on an old product. 

Reviewed by Evan Arppe.