Review: Jason Bourne

Jason Bourne (12A)

USA 2016 Dir: Paul Greengrass Cast: Matt Damon, Alicia Vikander, Tommy Lee Jones, Vincent Cassel, Julia Stiles, Riz Ahmed

At one point threatening to put 007 out of commission altogether with little more than tenacity and a weaponised biro, the groundbreaking Bourne trilogy didn’t so much energise 21st century action cinema as slap it thoroughly about the chops with a hardback book. Established by Swingers director Doug Liman with 2002’s The Bourne Identity and revitalised through former documentarian Paul Greengrass’ hand-held aesthetic on 2004’s Supremacy and 2007’s Ultimatum, these were action movies with soul, ones plugged into the paranoid, post-9/11 mindset yet firmly rooted in the haunted visage of Matt Damon’s amnesiac assassin.

Both viscerally electrifying and deeply emotional with a central character in constant pursuit of himself, the story was satisfyingly resolved at the end of Ultimatum (2012’s unfairly maligned Legacy starring Jeremy Renner is best considered as a separate entity altogether). It was therefore always questionable whether, after a nine-year absence, Bourne needed to step out of the shadows at all.

Unfortunately, given the result is this year’s blandly titled Jason Bourne (co-written by Greengrass and editor Christopher Rouse), it seems our suspicions were well-founded: acceptable as mindless entertainment but below par as a series entry, it feels like the first of the Matt Damon entries where the state of affairs has been dictated by box office potential.

Having swam away down the East River at the end of Ultimatum, we now find a bulked-up Jason participating in bare-knuckle fighting for cash on the Greek-Albanian border. However his shadowy existence is shattered when old associate Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) emerges to hack the CIA in an act of espionage dubbed “worse than Snowden.” It’s there that she discovers a shocking secret from Bourne’s past that puts them both on a collision course once again with a new secret ops program named Iron Hand, the shady successor to Treadstone and Blackbriar.

Bringing down the wrath of section chief Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones, whose superbly cratered face should surely be considered a national monument by now), plus his ambitious deputy Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander), it doesn’t take long for globe-trotting hell to break loose from a motorcycle pursuit through a Greek riot to a bone-crunching car chase along the Las Vegas strip, most of which is inaugurated by the near-psychotic Asset (Vincent Cassel) who comes after Bourne and with whom he has a serious beef.

The first three Bourne movies always did a masterful job at integrating action with character, getting us to revel in Jason’s ingenuity as he outwitted his enemies in such impossibly crowded areas as Waterloo whilst Greengrass’ relentlessly immersive style had us on the edge of our seats. (Let’s not also forget to give credit to Liman, without whom we wouldn’t be here at all.)

Sadly the innovation has somewhat curdled in Jason Bourne, with the movie reduced to a set-piece tick-list. Hand-held camera? Check. A dizzying array of global locations in the mere space of 10 minutes? Bingo. Escalating chaos scored to John Powell’s (and David Buckley’s) driving score? Absolutely. The problem is that nothing new is added; it all feels like a facsimile of what has come before with the references to Snowden and hacking little more than flippant window dressing. That the great Four Lions actor Riz Ahmed is also wasted as a Mark Zuckerberg-esque computer wiz who has sold his soul to the government devils, further compounds the disappointment.

If the movie holds together at all, it’s down to Damon’s controlled charisma; the contrast between his quietly wounded turn here and his gregarious, likeable charm in last year’s The Martian just underlines what a versatile star he is. Bourne is his signature character and Damon is not only able to sell every punch as it lands but the palpable sense of a deadly weapon being consumed by his own demons.

Good thing too, because everyone else feels like something of a thumbnail sketch, from Jones’ seething spook to Stiles’ oddly muted Nicky (the treatment of whom feels oddly throwaway and lacking in the gravitas one expects from this series). Only Vikander threatens to resonate as the ambiguous Heather, although by this stage the sight of humourless agents barking orders to assets down a headset borders on self-parody.

We’ve come to expect kinetic thrills from both Greengrass, whose previous film Captain Philips was masterful, and Damon, but one feels the corporate pressure weighing on their latest venture like nothing before. They remain a duo who can orchestrate controlled chaos masterfully (the climactic Vegas chase is a genuinely seat-clenching fender bender) but when said chaos ultimately doesn’t mean anything, it’s hard to care. We don’t need Jason to be Re-Bourne; we instead simply need to remind ourselves as to why the original trilogy still stands as one of the greatest of all time.