This past weekend saw the release of the highly anticipated
return of one of cinema’s most famous action heroes; Jason Bourne. The new film,
rather fittingly (or lazily depending on who you ask) called Jason Bourne, sees Matt Damon return as
the badass former CIA assassin suffering from amnesia and is once again
directed by Paul Greengrass, who helmed the latter two of the franchise’s
original three installments. It’s a sequel that not many people were expecting
would get made, seeing how after 2007’s The
Bourne Ultimatum it seemed as if the two were done with the franchise. An
attempt was made to continue the franchise in 2012, with Jeremy Renner starring
in the role of a new character in a film that still took place within the world
of the previous Bourne films.
Unfortunately for many people it ended up being a rather disappointing affair
and while there seemed to be plans to continue this part of the franchise, with
Justin Lin at one point attached to direct a fifth installment starring
Renner’s character Aaron Cross, for now it seems like those plans won’t be
materializing anytime soon. But perhaps that’s for the better at this point as
the new film finally sees the duo of Damon and Greengrass return to the
franchise that they made famous. So today, in honor of the release of Jason Bourne, it’s time we look back at
the series of action films that are well-regarded for their attempts at
developing a sense of realism while also being rather polarizing in regards to
their filmmaking style. And yes, that includes both the original Matt Damon
trilogy and the spin-off starring Jeremy Renner. These are the Bourne films…
THE BOURNE IDENTITY (2002)
Believe it or not, the Bourne
franchise did not start off under the direction of Paul Greengrass.
Instead, the first film in the series, 2002’s The Bourne Identity, was directed by Doug Liman, director of films
like 1996’s smash hit Swingers and 2014’s
film fan favorite Edge of Tomorrow.
And even though it no doubt ended up getting overshadowed by its two sequels,
for a while the first Bourne was
actually my personal favorite of the bunch. I think this film did a phenomenal
job of doing what every good ‘first film’ in a franchise should do. It solidly
sets up the story of its main character Jason Bourne, a man who is found
floating adrift in the Mediterranean Sea with two bullets in his back. He has
no idea who he is and embarks on a journey to figure out his true identity
while also staying on the run from the government program that he may have been
involved with. The film as a whole is a solid, well-paced, and well-edited spy
thriller and we as an audience are immediately hooked by the mystery
surrounding Bourne’s past. And while the action sequences weren’t necessarily
shot in the same kind of hand-held style of Greengrass’ later two films, they
are still very solid compared to what was to come later. Matt Damon, who
apparently got dealt with the equivalent of a ‘superhero casting’ backlash upon
being cast in the role, does a phenomenal job as Bourne as does Franka Potente
in the role of Bourne’s primary ally Marie. There’s also a few solid supporting
roles as well from the likes of Chris Cooper, Clive Owen, and Julia Stiles. In
short, while I’m not saying it’s the absolute ‘best’ of the series, The Bourne Identity is a very nice start
to this franchise. In fact, I have to
agree with fellow film critic Chris Stuckmann in that this film is arguably the
most layered of the franchise when it comes to story and character depth.
Rating: 4.5/5
THE BOURNE SUPREMACY (2004)
Thanks to the success of Identity,
a sequel was put into development and released two years later; The Bourne Supremacy. This time around,
however, Doug Liman did not return as director due to creative conflicts that he
had with the studio during production of the first film. So instead, Paul
Greengrass was hired primarily due to his work on the film Bloody Sunday. And with Greengrass’ hiring, the series truly
adopted its trademark style of handheld camerawork, a style that proved to be rather
polarizing amongst critics and audiences. As for me, I’ll admit that I too am rather
mixed on it. I appreciate what the filmmakers are trying to do in putting us
right there in the middle of the action and they do succeed in that regard.
However, my issue with this shooting style actually stems with the editing,
which is very fast and does a lot of cuts during scenes like this to the point
where sometimes it’s hard to tell where everything is spatially. By comparison,
while there were some instances of ‘fast cuts’ in the previous film, Supremacy does it much more frequently. Sure
this does a nice job of setting up the frenetic nature of the plot but it can
get rather annoying at times. And to be perfectly frank, I think Supremacy is the weakest of the original
trilogy. Now don’t get me wrong, I still think that this is a well-done spy
thriller that is pretty darn well-paced and the main plot of this film, in
which Bourne finds himself having to go back on the run when he’s framed for a
crime he didn’t commit, during which he finds out more about his past, is still
pretty darn engaging. Plus, Greengrass definitely upped the ante when it came
to giving the series a nice sense of gritty realism. However, it wouldn’t be
until the next film when he truly perfected his style into making a
finely-tuned spy thriller based around Matt Damon’s once again excellent turn
as Jason Bourne.
Rating: 4/5
THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM (2007)
Now given everything that I just said about Supremacy, some of you might think that
I have similar feelings to Greengrass’ second film in the franchise, The Bourne Ultimatum… and yet that’s
actually not the case. Ultimatum is
easily the best of the original trilogy and quite frankly one of the best
action films of the past few years. Because whereas Greengrass’ fast-editing
and handheld style sometimes faltered in certain parts of Supremacy, he perfected this style with Ultimatum. As a result, this film flows much more smoothly and
while it’s still very much an action-oriented film, this time around the story
is structured much better. It does a very nice job at concluding the arc that
Bourne (aka David Webb, his ‘real name’) goes through in this trilogy while also
making the CIA agents going after him a legitimately threatening force to be
reckoned with at every turn. All of this ends up giving the film some
incredibly tense action sequences, from Bourne trying to protect a reporter that
spilled the beans about him and a new government program, Blackbriar, from the
CIA in the middle of the congested crowds of London’s Waterloo Station to the
scene where Bourne and ally Nicky Parsons (Stiles) try to escape a Blackbriar
assassin in Tangier. Sure the fast-cutting handheld style is still in effect
for many of the film’s action sequences but I didn’t find it as annoying as it
sometimes got in Supremacy. And that
is why The Bourne Ultimatum not only
serves as a fitting conclusion to the original Bourne trilogy but is also its finest installment; it’s a
well-oiled, fantastically acted, and strongly directed spy thriller from beginning
to end. If you recall, initially The
Bourne Identity was my personal favorite of the franchise but upon
re-watch, I think that honor now goes to Ultimatum.
Rating: 5/5!
THE BOURNE LEGACY (2012)
With The Bourne
Ultimatum providing a pretty darn conclusive end to the story of Jason
Bourne (at least that was the case until the new film), it seemed very much clear
that Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass were done with the franchise. And yet in
2012, Universal moved on without the two of them and attempted to take the
series in a brand new direction. Tony Gilroy, who had been the primary writer
for all three of the previous films, took over directorial duties for this
fourth installment, The Bourne Legacy.
This time around, the focus shifted onto Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner), an
operative in another government program, Outcome. The film opens up around the
same time as the events of Ultimatum,
which effectively leads to the government shuttering all of their programs and
wiping out all of their agents, which includes Cross. In the months leading up
to its release, the film’s marketing kept pushing its connections to the
original trilogy. I even remember a specific ad in which Cross stated that he
was “going to finish what ‘he’ [Bourne] started”. However, that’s really not
the case at all with this film. Sure there are a few cameos from the cast of Ultimatum (e.g. Joan Allen, David Strathairn,
etc.) but there’s only a few mentions of the events of Ultimatum at the beginning of the film and even then they don’t
really factor that much into this film’s plot. And that quote about Cross finishing
what Bourne started? Yeah that line isn’t in the film… well, actually it is but
it wasn’t at all connected to Bourne. Heck, Cross doesn’t even follow in
Bourne’s footsteps whatsoever in this film. Literally the whole plot revolves
around him trying to acquire the meds that Outcome agents take to become
physically and mentally enhanced government agents.
And that pretty much translates to the fact that this film as
a whole is pretty darn dull. It’s very light on action and yet it’s somehow the
longest of the series at 2 hours and 15 minutes long whereas the previous three
films were all under two hours each. It certainly doesn’t have the same fast
pacing of the Damon films, that’s for sure. As for the action sequences that
are in there, Gilroy opted to not go with the same handheld shooting style that
Greengrass utilized in his films. For those who weren’t that big a fan of that
style that may seem like a good thing but in reality that style is what allowed
this series to stand out in the first place. As a result, the action sequences
in this film are fairly lackluster compared to the other films. Now from a
technical perspective, the film is decently shot, edited, directed and what
not. I think Jeremy Renner is perfectly fine in the lead role of Aaron Cross.
The same goes for Rachel Weisz as Cross’ main ally Dr. Marta Shearing, though
with that said their on-screen chemistry is rather weak. Sadly, Edward Norton
is quite underused in the role of Eric Byer, the Outcome program’s overseer who
goes after Cross the same way that Alexander Conklin (Chris Cooper), Ward
Abbott (Brian Cox), and Noah Vosen (David Strathairn) pursued Bourne in each of
the other three films. And yet Norton unfortunately doesn’t get much to work
with here compared to the other three. He doesn’t even share a scene with
Cross, at least not in the main story. The only scene that Renner and Norton
have together is a flashback scene that quite frankly didn’t really explain
anything about how the two of them are supposed to be connected.
I first reviewed this film way back in August 2012 when it
originally came out. I was really looking forward to it at the time and had
just watched all of the previous Bourne films
back-to-back for three straight nights in anticipation of its release. But when
I did see it, I’ll admit that I was rather disappointed by it. Sure I may have
given it a 3.5/5 in my review but this is definitely one of those cases
where I feel that I was being way too generous in regards to giving it a rating.
Ultimately, when I did a post on my ‘Top 5 Most Disappointing Films’ in
December of that year, I ended up putting it at the number one spot. And after
watching it again in preparation for this retrospective… sadly my thoughts on
it stay the same. Is it any wonder as to why this ‘review’ was longer compared
to the Damon films? This is an extremely bare-bones thriller. The plot is not
only rather simple, especially in regards to its measly attempts to connect to
the Damon films, but sometimes even a bit confusing, which is a big problem for
anyone going into it that hasn’t seen any of the other films. It may take place
in the same universe as the Damon films but it ends up being such an
insignificant part of it that nothing that happens in this film ultimately
matters in the long run. Like I said before, it’s decently made from a
technical perspective and I do feel that Jeremy Renner was perfectly capable of
taking over for Matt Damon as the star of the franchise. But at the end of the
day, the writing just wasn’t there for him and as a result, this unfortunately
ended up being a failed attempt to continue the Bourne franchise without the involvement of its original star and
primary director.
Rating: 2.5/5
In conclusion, here’s
how I rank these four films;
4. THE BOURNE LEGACY
3. THE BOURNE SUPREMACY
2. THE BOURNE IDENTITY
1. THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM
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