'Jason Bourne' A Review

Jason Bourne is an action/thriller, the long gestating fourth installment in the already complete Bourne Trilogy. The film opens on the titular hero Bourne(Matt Damon) on the Greece/Albanian border wracked with ennui and despair before going into a bare-knuckle boxing match. We then see Nicki Parsons(Julia Stiles), former CIA agent and Bourne cohort, in Iceland perpetrating a hack against her former employer in order to get black ops files and put them online. She's traced by Heather Lee(Alicia Vikander) under the watchful gaze of glowering Robert Dewey(Tommy Lee Jones). Parsons goes to Bourne for help and an international cat-and-mouse game ensues.

Damon returns to one of his most famous roles with a lot of emotional affectation. The confident and capable Bourne we know and love seems to be mostly gone in favor of a character that is more "damaged" this doesn't make much sense given what we know about him and seems to be completely motivated by the necessities of the plot. Stiles, always a welcome presence, is wasted as a plot device which becomes almost immaterial. Vikander puts in a noble effort but ultimately can't rise above the senseless contrivances of the script, also her American accent is distracting flat and indistinguishable. Jones as the tyrannical, corrupt, old white guy(in a long line of such Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, David Strathairn, Albert Finney) absolutely phones it in, the character and the performance are derivative and boring.

The large and glaring problem with Jason Bourne is its plot. There are some interesting ideas presented- digitalization, government accountability, internet privacy, social media surveillance etc.- but none of them are developed or brought to any kind of fruition. What we get is a regurgitation of the same plot of previous installments in a much more belabored and exhausted fashion. We go back to the same well of "Bourne's memory" which since Identity has provided diminishing returns. It is uninteresting at this point to go back in to Bourne's past. What is more interesting is his future, who will he become, that is the only question the movie should be answering and it doesn't.

Uninspired and predictable.

Don't See It.