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Jason Bourne - Latest in the series
It doesn’t seem like it, but it’s been nine years since Matt Damon last appeared as Jason Bourne in The Bourne Ultimatum. The next chapter in the story is here now. It was directed by Paul Greengrass, co-written by Greengrass and Christopher Rouse, with elements lifted from Robert Ludlum, author of the original books.
When the story begins, Bourne is recovering from the amnesia he developed in the previous movie, recovering memories, has been laying as low as he can, making some sort of living and honing his skills in illegal bare-knuckle boxing matches, in which he plays along for a while and then just decks his opponent. Meanwhile an activist for on-line privacy (Nicky Parsons) has hacked the CIA, retrieving documents that reveal the background of Bourne including information about his father and his training as super-soldier-assassin. A parallel plot to this is that a tech CEO, head of social medium Deep Dream, Aaron Kaloor (Riz Ahmed), is launching a public campaign to guarantee privacy on his site. He also has back door dealings with the CIA; his privacy campaign is at least part self promotion and grandstanding.
Meanwhile, back in the CIA HQ, a division head, Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander) has discovered the hack and revealed it to her boss, the Director, Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones). Parsons and Bourne meet in Athens, but are interdicted by a CIA goon squad that includes a character only known as “The Asset”, an expert assassin. Most of the CIA squad and Parsons are killed or otherwise neutralized by Bourne, but The Asset is now on Bourne’s trail and the trail leads to London, where further players emerge in this web. Both the Director and Lee want to get Bourne, but do they want to kill him or bring him back into the agency? Not everybody in the CIA is on the same page with this, so the big chase that makes up most of the movie is not just the fox and hound sort of chase. In fact, there are several hounds, with different agendas. Bourne, of course, doesn’t really trust any of them and, in any event, needs to evade The Asset, who continues on a relentless pursuit of Bourne, in the process doing a lot of shooting, blowing up a lot of stuff and wrecking an awful lot of cars. Also, just HOW does Deep Dream get involved in the Bourne chase and who is Kaloor dealing with in the CIA?
When you decide to see a movie that includes Jason Bourne, you know up front that there’s going to be a lot of action, many things get blown up and the contents of a small auto production plant will all be wrecked in about two hours. If you like that sort of thing, don’t miss it. JB is action pretty much from beginning to end, fairly breathless action at that. Nobody is going to win any acting Oscars for this, but I doubt that they expect to; it’s not what the movie is about. If you are looking for some sort of erudite script about the morals involved in internet security, privacy and spying, there won’t be much that you can’t read in a Twitter message…just know that it’s an issue and part of the plot.
All that said, I did enjoy it. The action is really end to end and fairly relentless. The machinations of who is betraying who, who do the hit squads really work for and what does Bourne want are complex, constantly shifting and, even if you don’t get that, you will probably enjoy the action anyway. The FX and sound are top-notch and the visuals are convincing. Having segments filmed in what looks like Greece (the Canary Islands sit in for Greece), London, Berlin, Washington and Las Vegas make the movie into a lightning tour. I assumed what it would be going in and enjoyed it. So, it seemed, did the rest of the large audience. Neither Jason Bourne as a character, nor Jason Bourne as a movie are big favorites of mine, but I was suitably breathless and entertained for the duration and that’s about as much as you can expect from an action movie franchise like this.
It doesn’t seem like it, but it’s been nine years since Matt Damon last appeared as Jason Bourne in The Bourne Ultimatum. The next chapter in the story is here now. It was directed by Paul Greengrass, co-written by Greengrass and Christopher Rouse, with elements lifted from Robert Ludlum, author of the original books.
When the story begins, Bourne is recovering from the amnesia he developed in the previous movie, recovering memories, has been laying as low as he can, making some sort of living and honing his skills in illegal bare-knuckle boxing matches, in which he plays along for a while and then just decks his opponent. Meanwhile an activist for on-line privacy (Nicky Parsons) has hacked the CIA, retrieving documents that reveal the background of Bourne including information about his father and his training as super-soldier-assassin. A parallel plot to this is that a tech CEO, head of social medium Deep Dream, Aaron Kaloor (Riz Ahmed), is launching a public campaign to guarantee privacy on his site. He also has back door dealings with the CIA; his privacy campaign is at least part self promotion and grandstanding.
Meanwhile, back in the CIA HQ, a division head, Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander) has discovered the hack and revealed it to her boss, the Director, Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones). Parsons and Bourne meet in Athens, but are interdicted by a CIA goon squad that includes a character only known as “The Asset”, an expert assassin. Most of the CIA squad and Parsons are killed or otherwise neutralized by Bourne, but The Asset is now on Bourne’s trail and the trail leads to London, where further players emerge in this web. Both the Director and Lee want to get Bourne, but do they want to kill him or bring him back into the agency? Not everybody in the CIA is on the same page with this, so the big chase that makes up most of the movie is not just the fox and hound sort of chase. In fact, there are several hounds, with different agendas. Bourne, of course, doesn’t really trust any of them and, in any event, needs to evade The Asset, who continues on a relentless pursuit of Bourne, in the process doing a lot of shooting, blowing up a lot of stuff and wrecking an awful lot of cars. Also, just HOW does Deep Dream get involved in the Bourne chase and who is Kaloor dealing with in the CIA?
When you decide to see a movie that includes Jason Bourne, you know up front that there’s going to be a lot of action, many things get blown up and the contents of a small auto production plant will all be wrecked in about two hours. If you like that sort of thing, don’t miss it. JB is action pretty much from beginning to end, fairly breathless action at that. Nobody is going to win any acting Oscars for this, but I doubt that they expect to; it’s not what the movie is about. If you are looking for some sort of erudite script about the morals involved in internet security, privacy and spying, there won’t be much that you can’t read in a Twitter message…just know that it’s an issue and part of the plot.
All that said, I did enjoy it. The action is really end to end and fairly relentless. The machinations of who is betraying who, who do the hit squads really work for and what does Bourne want are complex, constantly shifting and, even if you don’t get that, you will probably enjoy the action anyway. The FX and sound are top-notch and the visuals are convincing. Having segments filmed in what looks like Greece (the Canary Islands sit in for Greece), London, Berlin, Washington and Las Vegas make the movie into a lightning tour. I assumed what it would be going in and enjoyed it. So, it seemed, did the rest of the large audience. Neither Jason Bourne as a character, nor Jason Bourne as a movie are big favorites of mine, but I was suitably breathless and entertained for the duration and that’s about as much as you can expect from an action movie franchise like this.