I remember. I remember everything.
After an initial trilogy focused on Bourne (aka David Webb, aka Matt Damon) trying desperately to recover the memories of how he came to be an elite CIA assassin, this profound statement should be something of a huge milestone in his life. As it turns out, regaining his memory of volunteering for the CIA identity reprogramming process does nothing to change his rage and absolute distrust for the agency that both betrayed and keeps trying to eliminate him. His knowledge of his former identity does very little to repair his shattered sense of self. Accessing his past does produce one big question amidst the foggy answers, and that is the question of who murdered his father. Hunting for this answer brings Bourne back for yet another shaky camera, flashback-filled adventure, charging rapidly through the streets of cities all over the world, trying desperately to stay a few steps ahead of an omnipresent CIA that will stop at nothing to either bring him in or bring him down.
For this go-around, the CIA is found to be divided against itself. Heavy handed and reminiscent of a bygone era Director Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones), is prepared to eliminate Bourne by any means necessary. An ambitious and exceptionally intelligent agent, Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander), thinks it is absolutely possible to bring Bourne back into the fold and get him working for the CIA again. The systematic maneuvering between Lee and Dewey fuels Jason Bourne with most of the power it’s able to muster – at the very least, it provides enough conflict and agenda-driving for the action scenes to a few more multiple layers to the story, beyond that of the usual bait-and-trap setup.
Unfortunately, returning director Paul Greengrass with his editor and co-writer Christopher Rouse have a very difficult time overcoming the feeling of repetition that has begun to overshadow the series as a whole. Writer Tony Gilroy (Armageddon) was relieved of screenwriting duties for this particular film, and the resulting efforts produce the feeling that interest lied in creating more on-screen action instead of attempting to see that action flow congruently for the betterment of the film as a whole. The entire film is packed end-to-end with agents darting from one side of the screen to the other in explosive environments. Occasionally running toward each other, often times running away, but always featuring the same emotional levels, the chaotic angles, and the same live-or-die stakes.
For a film filled to the brim with modern day mass surveillance fears & paranoia, Jason Bourne feels as generalized and unconvincing as any other film in the anti big-brother genre all way back to the early 90’s. Early in the picture, Bourne’s former handler Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) hacks the CIA firewall, locates their deepest, darkest secrets (conveniently located in a single folder literally labeled “Black Ops”) downloads them all onto a USB thumb drive, and has every intention of releasing them to the public in true WikiLeaks fashion. Later in the film, a captured CCTV screenshot gets the “Zoom. Now, enhance” treatment that’s become such a groan-worthy cliché in any entertainment medium featuring the presence of blurry security-camera footage. We travel further down the surveillance rabbit hole with Dewey meeting up with social networking giant Deep Dream‘s creator Aaron Kalloor (Riz Ahmed) to discuss how the CIA can benefit from compromising the platform for the CIA’s benefit. It’s never fully explained what that would actually entail, what information the CIA hopes to acquire about it’s users, or why Kalloor thought for a second that if he paid back the seed money provided by the CIA, they would subsequently leave him alone forever.
Despite it’s trendy underlying conflict and entertaining improvisational-weapon fight scenes, I found Jason Bourne to be numbing in its relentless & repetitive high-speed pursuit sequences, most of which added nothing to the story, aside from a few wrecked cars and extra minutes. Scene after scene, the film delivered the same dynamic, frantic cutting, and constantly shifting angles of the the same high-stakes chase with the same adrenaline-pumping musical score. It’s all about the next car chase, the next unsuspecting victim, the next opportunity to flee. Perpetual pursuit gets dull, and Jason Bourne finds that point very early on. It then proceeds to just keep charging full-speed monotonously forward.
