Jason Bourne

The real Jason Bourne is back, and so is the direc­tor most famil­iar with the mus­cu­lar and amne­si­ac hero, Paul Green­grass. But what for? The last time we saw Matt Damon, in 2007’s The Bourne Ulti­ma­tum, the ex-spe­cial agent seemed to have final­ly dis­cov­ered the truth about his involve­ment with the CIA’s infa­mous Tread­stone pro­gramme: a true patri­ot with some past actions to make up for, he had delib­er­ate­ly vol­un­teered to become a defend­er of his nation. It’s under­stand­able that after the dis­ap­point­ing adden­dum fea­ture, The Bourne Lega­cy, with Jere­my Ren­ner ush­ered into the title role, the stu­dio was keen to bring back the orig­i­nal hero to restore the glo­ri­ous image of the orig­i­nal franchise.

As such, the premise of Jason Bourne feels some­what con­trived. Despite know­ing how he became Jason Bourne, David Webb sud­den­ly starts expe­ri­enc­ing brand new flash­backs reveal­ing scenes of which he has no rec­ol­lec­tion: a dis­cus­sion with his father, fol­lowed by the car bomb that killed him and the blur­ry crowd that gath­ered around the accident.

Such a heavy-hand­ed reviv­ing of the sto­ry would be ludi­crous were this new devel­op­ment not so gen­uine­ly affect­ing. By plac­ing the death of Bourne’s father in the equa­tion, Green­grass and screen­writer Christo­pher Rouse make Jason more human than he’s ever had the chance to be. Even though his girl­friend in Suprema­cy had brought out his sen­ti­men­tal side, her even­tu­al assas­si­na­tion seemed to sig­nal the ulti­mate impos­si­bil­i­ty for him to ever achieve any mean­ing­ful human attach­ment. His involve­ment in Tread­stone sud­den­ly appears as a more per­son­al affair.

Bourne’s sud­den reap­pear­ance star­tles the CIA direc­tor Robert Dewey (Tom­my Lee Jones) who, despite his sem­blance of poise, acts with uncal­cu­lat­ed and shock­ing­ly unpro­fes­sion­al para­noia. Imme­di­ate­ly sup­pos­ing that Bourne is after the secret and dubi­ous­ly legal new pro­gram he is about to launch, Dewey tries to elim­i­nate him and thus ends up involv­ing him in this scheme. The con­nec­tion between these two sto­ries, as ten­u­ous as it is, still remains far more con­vinc­ing than Dewey’s Inter­net sur­veil­lance pro­gram itself.

In an under­stand­able attempt to update the fran­chise for the dig­i­tal age, the CIA are no longer rely­ing sole­ly on spe­cial agents to keep the world safe, but also on the ser­vices of Zucker­berg/S­now­den-type hack­er-hero, Aaron Kalloor (Riz Ahmed), who has con­stant access to the per­son­al infor­ma­tion of the world’s pop­u­la­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Green­grass’ under­stand­ing of the com­put­erised world reveals itself as in dire need of an update. Did you ever think, in 2016, that you would hear a cyber agent ask­ing an assis­tant to ​“enhance” a CCTV image to mag­i­cal­ly get the sus­pect in focus?

Beyond old fash­ioned, the debate over pri­va­cy is pre­sent­ed in a dumb­ed-down ver­sion, as though Green­grass didn’t trust his audience’s intel­li­gence on such top­i­cal mat­ters. At a media con­fer­ence, Kalloor gets a stand­ing ova­tion when he reas­sures a doubt­ful audi­ence by sim­ply stat­ing, with­out any detail, that their pri­va­cy will nev­er be threat­ened by his technology.

Green­grass could jus­ti­fy his dis­in­ter­est for ide­olo­gies and for today’s tech­nolo­gies if his approach to action were more con­sid­er­ate and grat­i­fy­ing. There is, unfor­tu­nate­ly, no com­pen­sa­tion for this apa­thy in either the phys­i­cal­i­ty or the pyrotech­nics of Jason Bourne. Apart from one grip­ping, extend­ed pur­suit between the hero and Vin­cent Cassel’s bru­tal lone mur­der­er, most of the chase sequences see Bourne on site and observed by CIA agents via video sur­veil­lance. This arrange­ment explains why the rogue ele­ment must walk fast instead of run and blend into crowds rather than dis­turb them, but leaves lit­tle space for exhil­a­rat­ing action.

Nev­er­the­less, the comedic device that makes for most of the franchise’s humour still appears in the few vio­lent chas­es of the film: as Bourne makes an impres­sive­ly bold move such as jump­ing off a bridge or chang­ing lanes to dri­ve against traf­fic, an agent watch­ing the scene describes what just hap­pened (“Sir, he jumped off the roof”) to his or her boss, who can­not help but express his dis­be­lief, often with an explo­sive ​“he what?!” This absurd dis­crep­an­cy between the immo­bil­i­ty and increduli­ty of the CIA and Bourne’s immu­ni­ty to the ills of grav­i­ty, has come to define the series and the spy genre at large. It also finds a new con­fig­u­ra­tion here, as a woman comes to be the one observ­ing his acrobatics.

Once again, it is a female agent who seems to be the one who under­stands Bourne bet­ter. Ali­cia Vikan­der as Heather Lee is a new­com­er, a cyber spe­cial­ist who soon under­stands that Bourne only wants to know the truth about his enrol­ment in the project. She strong­ly echoes Pam Landy, the Joan Allen char­ac­ter from the pre­vi­ous films, yet only to the extent her inten­tions become pro­gres­sive­ly more ambigu­ous: in a spin on the CIA dou­ble agent motif, it seems that the woman rather than the man might this time be the most careerist and venge­ful of them all. Vikan­der proves per­fect­ly cast, as her severe, inscrutable face could be the mark of devo­tion and jus­tice. Or it could reflect her ambi­tion of revenge against Kalloor on obscure per­son­al grounds.

Most of the ques­tions raised through­out the film remain unan­swered. While such an obvi­ous call for a sequel (the title itself refus­es to use a con­clu­sive word à la ​‘Suprema­cy’ or ​‘Ulti­ma­tum’) isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly a nui­sance, Green­grass asks for too much patience from his audi­ence, and he gives them back lit­tle in the way of thrills. His already dat­ed half-sto­ry will be back for anoth­er sequel, and hope­ful­ly it’ll be in bet­ter shape.