Jason Bourne
You thought he was gone forever, but you can’t keep the writer of Good Will Hunting down!
Jason Bourne follows the titular amnesiac assassin from the first three Bourne films as he is wrong to get into the world of cartridges running and fistfights as the people he once worked for come after yet again.
This guy is very not fond of that lens flare!
I have to be honest, I have not seen The Bourne Legacy. I didn’t want to waste my time with a film I’ve been told is bad and I heard has all sorts of nonsense about gene manipulation or something.
It doesn’t matter though as this film has literally nothing to do with that fourthquel. This is a follow-up to the Bourne trilogy. If you not seen those, don’t watch this one.
Matt Damon is back as Jason and once again he’s awesome. Not awesome in a particularly layered sort of performance, but also in that he is totally settled into his role and he plays it simply but effectively.
in this film there are a couple of changes to the Bourne formula. There’s a lot more hacking than there was in the previous movies before Snowden. It has open some new ideas for storytelling which is cool and is handled well for a hacker movie. However, a character does say “Use SQL to hack the database”, which made me laugh or weep it as a computing student.
Also new is Bourne’s motive and arc. In previous outings, his motives were fear, love, vengeance and the pursuit of answers for a spouse. Here we have a new motive, possibly doing some good. Possibly stopping the government from doing something bad.
Is arc from “leave me alone” to “I’m here to do something” is possibly not complete by the end, but it is organic enough, thanks to the writing partially done by Paul Greengrass.
Greengrass is in the director’s chair again and the film is gloriously handle under his lead. Action scenes are shot shakily but coherently and each of the excellent set pieces develop a character.
So to good Bourne film.
There are problems, though.
Firstly, a couple elements feel cut and paste from the previous films. I will say what they are but let’s just say that no matter how well they’re done, it reminds me too much of what came before.
Secondly, the title. It’s so boring. I can think of three better ones right now. The Bourne Totality, The Bourne Boogaloo, The Bourne Again.
Thirdly, and this is the big one, you can have the feeling this film should not exist. Ultimatum was a perfect action movie, amongst the very best that he will has given us so far. A rounded off Bourne stories so well.
At least with the latest Star Wars film, the story is an unexpected continuation with new characters and ideas. Here, the ideas are cool, but a little unnecessary and the new characters are duplicates of all ones.
This series will only work if Damon does two more Bourne films and dies at the end doing something heroic, which so far, he’s barely done.
That would be a proper conclusion.
Recommended Scenario: If you’ve seen the Bourne trilogy and one more, but I don’t demand you see this.
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