A few years back, when Jeremy Renner tried his hand as a Bourne-replacement in “The Bourne Legacy” I wrote an article about just how damn similar all the Bourne movies were—same basic plot, American character-actor CIA baddie, more internatonal-character actor rival assassin, outlandish car chase through a city towards the end with more hand-to-hand fights towards the middle, even the same closing credits song—and sadly “Jason Bourne” doesn’t do one thing differently than the first four movies. These movies are made with too much outright skill to be “bad” but it just might be the least of the series so far.
What Works: Even if some of the Bourne plot dynamics have grown a bit sleepy over the years, it still knows how to spring to life for that rousing last-act car chase and this one—set on the Las Vegas strip between an armored SWAT vehicle (that looks like a bank truck gone medieval), Bourne’s Dodge Charger, and a few dozen hapless cars that are just in the wrong place at the wrong time—is a show stopper…
What Doesn’t: The problems come with the movie before Las Vegas, the movie that doesn’t really know what it wants to say or how it wants to be different, only that the “Bourne” franchise needs another installment, and Damon is apparently a bigger draw than Renner. [Although, I had kind-of gotten involved with Renner’s drug-addicted assassin and Edward Norton’s craftier bad guy, and was more than curious to see what their next run-in would be.] It settles for a “CIA surveillance is bad…uhhh…bad CIA, uhhh…I just want to be left alone!” mood of teenage-petty angst where Damon’s perpetually humorless, sullen Bourne seems to make whoever’s in charge of the CIA his absentee daddy stand-in.
This Bourne installment even explores Bourne’s daddy issues (in a haphazard, “I guess” sort-of way), but the problem with Damon’s Bourne character is that he’s not really all that interesting. [Perhaps the reason it took Damon so long to agree to another movie is because—deep down—he knows Bourne is one of the least interesting characters he’s played.] Having an existentialist spy franchise all about the identity of the main character only really works if it’s eventually revealed that there is a compelling identity behind the mystery. Nothing we’ve seen of Bourne really hints at that, and Bourne seems filled with a self-loathing curiosity that makes him want to know who he is, even if he seems disgusted with it at the same time. It’s a bit like basing a spy franchise around a sour, curdled-dreams bar drunk.
And Alicia Vikander gives her worst-performance to date as a “Southern” CIA lady honcho. She’s miscast and unconvincing (Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain weren’t available?), and this doesn’t hold an auspicious beginning for Alicia to be the next big action heroine (she’s already going to take over the “Tomb Raider” franchise).
What I Would Have Done Differently: It’s probably time to have Bourne actually do something besides thwart his former CIA employers or try to evade detection. There must be some mission, any mission he feels worthy of himself besides running out the clock on his own life (which usually looks miserable) while vaguely trying to find out “who he is” at the same time he’s trying to forget his former life and avoid everyone in it.