The first Jason Bourne movie came out in 2002, with star Matt Damon still a fairly young man of his early ‘30s. 14 years and a James Bond revival later, it’d be easy to forget how strong that original franchise was. And if you figure that about just as much time has passed in the movie’s timeline since the end of “The Bourne Ultimatum,” you’d think the CIA might’ve all but forgotten about Bourne as well.
And yet here we are in “Jason Bourne” with another set of CIA operatives chasing him down and trying to bury the past as they whisper his name in hushed astonishment. Now it’s Oscar winner Alicia Vikander’s turn to learn she “has no idea who you’re dealing with.”
Bourne (Damon) has been out of the game for years, lifelessly bare knuckle brawling in underground fights, but when his old colleague Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) ropes him back in, it turns out Bourne is still very much the priority of the current CIA director Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones, who has played the gruff, sarcastic cop and secret agent so many times it’s amazing he wasn’t in this franchise earlier).
Robert Ludlum’s original series of Bourne books only went three deep, so director and screenwriter Paul Greengrass has to concoct a reason for Bourne to come out of exile and care about the chase again. Nicky hacked the CIA and reveals to Bourne that there were new, never before seen documents that prove Bourne’s father pioneered the Treadstone operation and had his son surveilled and recruited. Dewey is about to launch a new Black Ops campaign, and fearing Bourne might whistle blow, he sends another ruthless assassin known only as The Asset (Vincent Cassel) on Bourne’s tail. It at first feels shoe-horned into the existing story universe and forced before clicking into gear at the franchise’s usual tempo.
For “Jason Bourne” to feel fresh though, it would have to be about Bourne showing signs of middle age and fatigue, or at the very least the CIA writing him off as an afterthought. Instead,Bourne is as sharp and badass as ever, unable to be bested mentally or physically, and yet whether it’s a motorcycle chase in Greece or a stealth mission in London, Greengrass doesn’t have any new set pieces to introduce to this franchise or shades to Bourne’s story. And what’s more, Greengrass’s visceral, kinetic action style of shaky cam photography and briskly paced, slow burn foot chases have lost their innovation after nearly a decade of copy cats and parodies.
Bourne felt vital in a post-9/11 world, but the new “Jason Bourne” resorts to whispering about Edward Snowden, and it involves a subplot with tech giant Aaron Kalloor (Riz Ahmed) being recruited by Dewey to spy on everyone, but these all feel like broad implications of the surveillance state rather than Greengrass tackling 2016 politics head-on. “Privcay is freedom,” Kalloor says in a private meeting with Dewey, only to have his words turned around to suggest that social media has invariably made people less safe.
What feels new is the suggestion that Bourne has a choice, the question of whether he made himself to be a killer or if he can escape his past. And yet Bourne has always been grappling with his identity (it was the name of the first movie after all), and it’s a missed opportunity that time and age have not worn on Bourne in the slightest.
Still, “Jason Bourne” is a welcome return to form from the Jeremy Renner spinoff “The Bourne Legacy,” doing away with the pseudo-science and overbearing plotting. Cassel has a blankly sinister snarl and grimace that makes him a perfectly effective killer. Vikander would have a bright future in this franchise were it to continue. And though Damon doesn’t even have too many lines, his calm demeanor and plain expression serve as a reminder why Bourne was his star making role.
But in a summer of sequel fatigue in which franchises have done little more than move along the chains, hitting the same beats in an effort to simply keep the brand going, “Jason Bourne” hasn’t done enough to suggest one of the best secret agents and action stars of the 2000s still has a place in 2016.
3 stars