Volunteered Because of a Lie

Jason Bourne

There are a select few actors and actresses in Hollywood that have the rare ability to say they have an iconic character on their resume. Eddie Murphy has Axel Foley (Beverly Hills Cop). Bruce Willis has John McClane (Die Hard). Hell, Harrison Ford has two…Indiana Jones and Han Solo. In 2002 Matt Damon entered this prestigious club by portraying an amnesic assassin just trying to find out who he is and where he comes from. Since then Damon has played the character of Jason Bourne three times and helped accumulate close to $1 billion worldwide in box office totals. Damon and longtime Bourne director Paul Greengrass have chosen to come back for at least one more adventure with the aptly titled Jason Bourne.

The Story: 10 years after the events of The Bourne Ultimatum, former assassin Jason Bourne (Damon) has been living off the grid and making his money in underground boxing matches. However his past somehow catches back up with him when ally Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles Silver Linings Playbook) finds him in Greece. Parsons informs Bourne that the CIA has built a new black ops program similar to that of Treadstone and that Bourne’s link to the latter program is deeper than he expected. With the hint of a parental tie to the program, Bourne goes on the hunt for the fourth time to uncover even more truth of his past that leads him all the way to the director of the CIA (Tommy Lee Jones The Fugitive).

The Good: This is a Bourne movie through and through. Branching away from the novels, director Paul Greengrass brings every aspect of the previous movies that audiences around the world love about these movies. The film is action packed and highly engaging. I loved how Greengrass set this film up to become a separate entity from the first three movies by bringing in mysterious characters and presenting questions that hopefully will be answered in upcoming films. One such character is Heather Lee played wonderfully by Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl). Her character has a hidden agenda that isn’t fully realized with the confines of this film which sets up her existence in other films.

The Bad: As much as I love these movies (even Legacy), this film fails to live up to the hype. This is a by-the-books Bourne film that doesn’t seem to move the plot along enough to warrant the film to exist at all. Greengrass is deserves the praise I gave him in the previous paragraph for those aspects he brings to this new film, however everything that he did right with the other two films he directed he brought into this film. Almost like a 2 hour montage of every highlight of the previous films. Nothing new is really done, I mean with the exception of Las Vegas the film stoops as low as to go to the same locations as the previous films. At times Damon even seems exhausted and just goes through the same ol’ motions he does in the previous movies.

The Verdict: Jason Bourne is just okay. Maybe our expectations of Damon getting back in the Bourne saddle were too high, but this film delivers what we want but nothing more. Greengrass produces an exciting film that just felt the same. I do pray that Greengrass and Damon recognize their mistake and try again, because if this is the script that brought Damon back to the Bourne franchise then I think he should have stayed retired like his character.

Wait for Blu-Ray