HUGE SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!
I honestly wished I expected more from Jason Bourne. To be quite frank, the Bourne franchise is probably the least need of a rebootquel, since every other action franchise clearly aspires to it now. Therefore, I was not the least convinced that we needed to reunite Paul Greengrass or Matt Damon or anyone who has since moved on to better things, and after actually seeing it... I’m probably even less convinced. See, the original Bourne’s were great because they were great at their time and standards, and watching this latest installment constantly reminding me of that makes it look more blatantly dated than it ever was. While by no means Bourne Legacy level bad, this movie is just an airless action movie made less boring solely by the virtue of Greengrass being so passionate of this reunion to a huge fault.
For those living under a rock and has never seen a Jason Bourne movie before, well… neither did I, so don’t sweat it. But for what I can gather after a week of catching up, the Bourne franchise widely regards itself as a “thinking man's” action movie both in design and theme, as the series blends intricate, real-life spy thrillers with ass-kicking action movies. The movie revolves around Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, a super soldier in an effort to find out his true identity while under constant surveillance by a CIA company Treadstone, who manufactured his crime-fighting powers in the first place. He engages in car chases, hand-to-hand combat, tactile cat-and-mouse scenarios, more car chases, occasional and unravels twists and turns until in Ultimatum (of course it’s the best one. Get over it already) he cracks the biggest component of his identity, thus the whole franchises’ subtext in general. After which he fakes his own death and goes into hiding, realizing that all of his efforts aren’t worth putting more people in danger.
So, of course, being allegedly a reboot, Jason Bourne opts to erase all that completely by dragging Bourne out of hiding in order to resolve some hidden agenda by his father. Yep, the new Bourne movie, out of a franchise that otherwise broke the barrier for storytelling in spy action movies in the last decade, now trots out the ever-so-tired “daddy’s research” storyline. In 2016. Matters worse, the girl who got Bourne out of hiding – Julia Styles, one of the returning cast who somehow looks less game for this series than grumpy face Damon – gets the duty of also serving extra motivation for the hero as she’s assassinated by a new Asset (Vincent Cassel) who, big shock, may or may not be involved in the dad’s murder. So once again Bourne goes through yet another cat-and-mouse game, this time against the new company Ironhand run by Tommy Lee Jones and Alicia Vikander, to solve yet another mystery about his past.
Outside of that, the movie just retreads the series right down to remaking set piece moments. Bike/car chase: check! Needle in a haystack scenario with a gratuitous police riot: check! Lady Treadstone character teaming up with Bourne who may or may not betray him in the end: check! Bad guys looking at tracking monitors while Bourne kicks ass: check!
Even though I adore Paul Greengrass’ shaky-cam aesthetic more than anyone, and to be fair the action remains his films highlights by a country mile here, he can’t seem to find a better angle of which he could tackle that doesn’t sacrifice credibility. Even past the naked box-checking of the structure, the whole setup feels obligatory; There is absolutely no reason why Bourne should get out of hiding and even though the stupid father mystery is the driving force of the story, there’s no point for Bourne to care outside of giving extra motivation to beat the bad guys. It’s as if Styles should never have died to bring Bourne back in the first place. I’d see anything from Greengrass since he’s the one who perfected this series, but this feels like such a weak turn from him.
Weak also extends to the film’s treatment to its subtext that serves as their lasting weight. Referring back to the “theme” part of the series – having the Bourne movies stand as an anti-Bush allegory after 9/11 was herculean at the time – the payoff of the series was that Bourne signed up to be Bourne because he wanted to. He wished to serve his country and be part of an advance organization while risking his identity, only to realize that his new masters were the real bad guys. Not only was that a highly unique twist of its time, it was also a gut-punching deconstruction of post-9/11 soldiers during the Iraq war; “Who is the real enemy” and all that. In Jason Bourne, they try to go further into that twist and it ultimately falls apart, reverting Bourne’s motivation into a revenge story because the SAME guy who killed Styles also killed his dad. UGH!!
Despite all that, the film is just too stale and behind the times for me to warrant any more hatred. I appreciate Greengrass for implementing relevant issues like an otherwise gratuitous subplot with Jones trying to recruit a Snowden-esque hacker and then threatens to kill him if he spills the beans, but the rest of the movie feels so dated. They literally play the exact same old Moby song at the end for crying out loud! For a series that revolutionized the way we think of action spy movies, this is such a wasted effort even when everything else topped its game long before this even happened.
Jason Bourne is exactly what I expected: just another bland reboot. If you like the classic Bourne action/spy espionage stuff revised twofold in 2016 then go right ahead, because this is only what this film is concerned with. The action, the performances, and Greengrass’ classic action chops remain as big as ever, but everything else stumbles. See it and judge for yourselves, but I wouldn't bother.
Rating: 5/10
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