In 2002, Matt Damon took on what would arguably become his
most famous role to date, Jason Bourne, in The
Bourne Identity, loosely based on the 1980 novel of the same name by Robert
Ludlum. Directed by Doug Liman, the film followed the titular amnesiac assassin
as he tried to remember his past while staying on the run from his former
employers at the CIA. The film was a solid critical and commercial hit but Liman
did not return to direct the next two films due to creative conflicts that he
had with Universal during its production. Instead, Paul Greengrass took over as
director and the series ended up becoming even more successful, resulting in a
solid sequel in 2004’s The Bourne
Supremacy and culminating in the highly acclaimed third installment of the
franchise, 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum.
That film provided a pretty darn conclusive finale to the original trilogy and
for quite a long time Damon and Greengrass made it clear that they weren’t
planning on doing another film after that. But there was still talk about a
potential sequel and so, under the direction of the series’ head writer Tony
Gilroy, 2012’s The Bourne Legacy took
the series in a different route, focusing in on a different character, Aaron
Cross, played by Jeremy Renner, but still taking place within the same
timeframe as the other films. Sadly, the film proved to be highly disappointing
for fans of the series and it seems as if plans to continue that specific part
of the franchise have dissipated for now. And yet, just a few years ago, an
unexpected development occurred when it was announced that Damon and Greengrass
would indeed return to do another Bourne film.
And so, here we are with Jason Bourne,
which continues the story of its titular assassin as he begins to uncover even
more about his past.
Over the course of the original trilogy, former CIA assassin
Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) struggled to remember his past after a failed assassination
mission resulted in him getting shot twice in the back and dealt with an
extreme case of amnesia. By the end of it all, Bourne learned that his real
name was David Webb and that he himself volunteered for the government program
that he was once a part of, Treadstone. He then proceeded to expose many of the
government’s black ops operations before going off the grid. This new film
opens up a decade after the events of Ultimatum,
as Bourne is shown to have been participating in illegal fight rings to make a
living while at the same time managing to overcome the amnesia that had been
affecting him for so long. Meanwhile, Bourne’s former Treadstone ally Nicky
Parsons (Julia Stiles) hacks the CIA’s servers in order to expose their newer
black ops programs, specifically one known as ‘Iron Hand’ that is set to
utilize assets from many of their former programs like Treadstone and
Blackbriar. During this time, she also comes across more information about
Bourne, specifically in regards to his late father Richard (Gregg Henry). The
CIA, led by director Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones), catches wind of this
intrusion and appoints the head of their cyber ops division, Heather Lee
(Alicia Vikander), to the job of going after Parsons, who meets with Bourne in
Greece to relay the information to him. Sure enough, this soon results in
Bourne once again being pursued by the CIA as he begins to investigate this new
black ops program and, more importantly, find out the truth about why he
volunteered for the Treadstone program in the first place.
After the fairly lackluster affair that was The Bourne Legacy, the return of Matt Damon
and Paul Greengrass to the franchise is most certainly a welcome one. This of
course means that the action sequences are all done in Greengrass’ trademark
handheld style that utilizes a lot of fast cuts. As with the previous
Greengrass-directed Bourne films,
this is a style that you either love or hate and as for me, at the very least I
will say that Greengrass’ latter two Bourne
films have done much better jobs at controlling this shooting style, as
well as the rapid editing, compared to his first, Supremacy. As a result, the action sequences are intense and keep
you at the edge of your seat from beginning to end. However, there are a few
problems that emerge from the writing, which this time around was handled not
by Tony Gilroy but by Greengrass and his long-time editor Christopher Rouse.
Maybe this is just the consequence of the fact that Ultimatum pretty much concluded the whole mystery surrounding
Bourne’s past but the new additions to Bourne’s backstory, which in this film
primarily revolve around his father, feel just a bit tacked on. I’m not saying that
they’re absolutely ‘terrible’ plot developments but at this point we’ve already
gotten a pretty clear sense of who Bourne used to be before he joined
Treadstone. Also, the primary plot revolving around an impending social media
platform known as Deep Dream created by Aaron Kalloor (Riz Ahmed) is pretty
darn undeveloped as well. Sure it does its job of maintaining the series’ ‘grounded
in realism’ feel, especially when taking into account how much time has passed
since Ultimatum, but at the end of
the day the stuff with Bourne is what really matters more.
Even after nearly a whole decade since Ultimatum, Matt Damon is once again excellent in the role of Jason
Bourne. In the months leading up to the film’s release there was quite a bit of
talk over a report that claimed that he would only have about 25 lines in the
new film and sure enough, that does seem to be the case as he doesn’t say that
much in this film. Still, he does get across all of the emotional turmoil that
Bourne has gone through over the years just as well as he did in the previous
films. As Nicky Parsons, Julia Stiles is the only primary member of the
previous trilogy’s cast to return. She too does a good job as well though
without giving too much away, her role in the film is very minor. Instead,
Alicia Vikander takes over as the film’s new female lead and she’s excellent as
is her character’s whole motivation and how she works off of, and in some cases
with, Bourne. The same goes for Tommy Lee Jones in the role of CIA director
Dewey but for me one of the best additions to the cast is Vincent Cassel, who
plays one of the CIA’s assassins, referred to only as ‘the Asset’, that is
brought in to go after Bourne. This series has seen plenty of memorable CIA-backed
assassins over the years, from Clive Owen’s ‘Professor’ in Identity to Karl Urban’s Kirill in Supremacy. And yet Cassel actually manages to be arguably the most
layered of the bunch. It’s established that due to Bourne’s actions in Ultimatum, the ‘Asset’, who was a member
of the CIA’s Blackbriar program, had been captured and tortured due to the
program being leaked, giving him quite a personal grudge towards Bourne. And,
again, without giving anything major away, we come to learn that Bourne has his
own reasons to hold a grudge against him, resulting in one excellent conflict between
the two.
Jason Bourne is a
pretty solid return to form for this franchise, and that of course is primarily
due to the return of Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass. Some might argue that this
film wasn’t really necessary due to the finality of the ending of The Bourne Ultimatum but at the very
least their return is much appreciated, especially after the lackluster attempt
at a spin-off a few years ago that neither of them were involved with. As a
result of their return, the series very much returns to its roots, namely in
regards to its unique though still very much polarizing handheld shooting, fast
editing style that produces some incredible and tension-filled action
sequences. Admittedly the writing isn’t as strong this time around which,
again, could just be a result of Ultimatum
wrapping everything up pretty neatly, but the film makes up for it with an
excellent ensemble cast and the aforementioned technical mastery of Greengrass’
direction. So in short, I wouldn’t necessarily call this film the best of the
series. If I were to rank this film alongside the other three Damon films (not
counting Legacy in this case because,
well, it’s not really worth bringing up at this point), I’d probably rank it
above Supremacy but below Identity and Ultimatum. Still, while the film may not necessarily reach the same
amazing heights as its predecessors, it’s still a very entertaining,
fast-paced, and overall still very engrossing spy thriller that gives audiences
another opportunity to go on an adventure with one of cinema’s most badass
action heroes.
Rating: 4/5
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