Cast: Matt Damon (Jason Bourne), Tommy Lee Jones(Robert Dewey), Alicia Vikander (Heather Lee), Vincent Cassel (“Asset”), Julia Stiles (Nicky Parsons)
Director: Paul Greengrass
Synopsis: It’s been 10 years since Jason Bourne walked away from the agency that trained him to become a deadly weapon. Hoping to draw him out of the shadows, CIA director Robert Dewey assigns hacker and counterinsurgency expert Heather Lee to find him. Lee suspects that former operative Nicky Parsons is also looking for him. As she begins tracking the duo, Bourne finds himself back in action battling a sinister network that utilizes terror and technology to maintain unchecked power.
Review:
***NOTE: This review may contain minor spoilers. You have been warned!***
Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass have reunited for the latest iteration of the Bourne franchise. The hope was that the duo would return the franchise to the heights it enjoyed throughout its first trilogy. The good news is that Jason Bourne is a fine continuation of the original trilogy. The bad news is, it’s also weaker than the original trilogy.
The movie takes place ten years after the events of The Bourne Ultimatum. Jason Bourne is living in Greece, away from all the hell he left behind. However, he is pulled back into the fray when Nicki Parsons, hacking the CIA in search of information about a black operation called “Ironhand”, stumbles across information about Bourne’s father’s involvement in “Treadstone”, the program that Bourne volunteered for. When her breach is detected, she is traced and followed. Unwittingly, she leads them back to Bourne.
Greengrass is as adept as ever at setting up heart-pounding action sequences. The shaky-cam fight sequences are still just as disorienting as the prior movies, but just as pulse-pounding. The chase sequences are equally insane, from a tight-quarters sequence in Greece to an absolutely destructive finale in Vegas.
Damon himself has not lost a step as Bourne, whether he’s eluding pursuers or pounding the everlasting snot out of baddies. The movie begins with him living in Greece and making a living by knocking out Serbs in prize fights. From his contact with Parsons to the movie’s conclusion, he’s travelled half the globe MacGver’d his way through several close calls, and done his damnedest to uncover the last few secrets about his past.
Unfortunately, it’s here where the movie begins to trip up. The intrigue behind Bourne’s back story is superseded by the details about “Ironhand”. While it pertinent to the overall story, it drags the narrative a bit. The first trilogy highlighted Bourne’s attempts to recover the fragments of his amnesia-riddled memory while fighting his old masters; this movie drowns Bourne’s quest for the truth in more paranoiac drivel about government intrusion. Hints of Snowden and government surveillance take the forefront and drown out Bourne’s story. Snowden is actually mentioned at one point as a sort of grounding point. I want to root for Bourne to beat back his former masters; I am forced to care instead about the CIA’s efforts to monitor our private information.
(For the record, I am not making light of the government’s attempts to intrude on citizens’ privacy. I’m just saying that I don’t go to the theater to watch a Bourne flick so that the flick can beat me over the head, reminding me that the government wants to see my sexting pics!)
The only saving grace about the whole “Ironhead” subplot is Tommy Lee Jones’s role as CIA Director Dewey. While he is there simply to mug for the camera and chew a bit of scenery, I love his deadpan line delivery and his smug gaze. Jones is a national treasure, and I hope everyone realizes that: Alicia Vikander’s role as Heather Lee, the ice woman analyst with ambitions, plays out a bit hollow. Yes, she seems proficient and knowledgeable, and her character is intelligent and somewhat persuasive. But many of the situations that she handles seem too convenient.
That’s the other thing that pulled me out of this movie. Too many things seem convenient. The scene where the world-class hacker plugs an unknown USB drive given to him by Bourne into his laptop; the fact that this hacker just happens to have an unsecured cell phone; the ability of Lee to identify and target this conveniently vulnerable cell phone to track and find Bourne. The movie’s narrative depends too much on the ability of supposedly smart people to be dumb for about 15 seconds.
Does it detract too much from the movie? Not terribly. Those scenes are no more grating than the one where a social media mogul says they’re not going to violate peoples’ privacy…and everyone present believes him. Those are contrivances that the movie uses to move things along. But they do take away from the main story, which should be about Bourne’s quest to break free from his erstwhile masters while reclaiming the last vestiges of his memory. That quest involves him ripping apart his last few obstacles, including Vincent Cassel’s one-note foil, the “asset”.
Let me reiterate: I enjoy this movie. When it’s in its element, it’s completely engrossing. The tension Greengrass weaves before each set piece is palpable, making you wonder just how exactly Bourne is going to get out of each particular situation. Damon cannot be discounted in his role, as he totally sells Bourne’s desire to find the truth while wrecking his former masters. But Jason Bourne makes me point out my quibbles for it more than my praises.
Although it is the weakest of the movies that fans acknowledge (sorry, but The Bourne Legacy was a misstep, despite my positive feelings towards Jeremy Renner), it is still an entertaining movie. Being the worst of the “good” Bourne movies is not a disgrace; most summer movies only aspire to reach the levels this movie reaches. I enjoyed this movie despite it’s faults.
Good: Pulse-pounding action, great characterizations, Tommy Lee Jones, OMG THE LAST CHASE SEQUENCE!!!
Bad: Small chinks in the narrative armor, less Bourne; more government
Verdict: 8.5 out of 10
