Jason Bourne (2016): review
The tormented Treadstone agent returns to action. Again.
The latest installment of the Bourne franchise reminds me of the dilemma that his rebooted counterpart is currently experiencing in Eric Van Lustbader’s Bourne series of novels: time marches on relentlessly, but he is still expected to perform the incredible deeds he did in his prime. To be fair, Matt Damon’s Bourne is still believable as the tormented rogue Treadstone agent — even though this credibility is now at a cross-roads as he approaches middle age.
In the film, ten years have passed since the events of The Bourne Ultimatum. Jason Bourne aka David Webb has gone completely off the grid, eking out an existence as a hard-scrabbled brawler in underground fight tournaments. So he’s alive — but it’s not much of a life. He is forced to take on the Bourne identity again when former Treadstone associate Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) re-enters his life.
She has gone off the grid too, embedded in the world of dark web hacktivists in Iceland. She uncovers more information about Jason’s past revolving around his father’s involvement with Treadstone, plus plans for the CIA’s upgrade of the Treadstone program: Iron Hand. Her possession of this intel and Bourne’s connection would compromise the agency and, you know where this is headed, the CIA hit squads fan out across the globe in search of both Jason and Nicky.
There is also an old school-versus-new school rift emerging within the agency. Ambitious cyber ops division head Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander) believes that assassination isn’t the only option and she’s confident that her scheme to bring Bourne in from the cold will succeed. New CIA director Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones) approves her plan, but he has every intention to avenge Bourne’s embarrassing exposure of the Blackbriar program. He secretly tasks an Iron Hand “asset” to seek and destroy him.
While director Paul Greengrass does a credible job in making the film timely and relevant — Jason and Nicky’s rendez-vous is during a Greek austerity protest in Athens, and Nicky’s hack is described as being “worse than Snowden” (the Snowden leak happened in 2013) — the film as a whole feels more like a ‘Bourne’s Greatest Hits’ movie than a brand new entry.
The plot was thinner and not as cohesive as in previous films, but Jason Bourne tries to make up for its wafer-thin story in the action sequences. Jason and Nicky’s harrowing escape through the streets of Athens was a highlight, as were the Las Vegas car chase sequences and Bourne’s combat scenes. When David Webb takes on the Bourne identity, his primary focus is to survive and win without compromise — plot contrivances be damned — and the film largely gets away with it.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as Jason Bourne is an action hero first, but one could argue that what made the Bourne franchise so appealing is that it was rooted in real-world ethical dilemmas, political intrigues and believable consequences. There is some of this in Jason Bourne, but the story in Supremacy and Ultimatum was always its foundation.
In this 2016 entry, the plot at times became an after-thought while big explosions, fight sequences and catastrophic property damage took the forefront.
Jason Bourne is still a good and entertaining film that mostly delivers what Bourne fans expect from the rogue Treadstone amnesiac, who was found in the waters off Marseilles in The Bourne Identity back in 2002.
It is also a franchise that I regret to admit may also be finally showing its age.
Originally published at http://thetorontonerd.wordpress.com on August 3, 2016.
