Paul Greengrass's 2016 return opens with Bourne in a Greek underground fighting circuit, earning money with his fists in a country in economic collapse. It is a pointed image: a man of extraordinary capability reduced to spectacle, fighting for an audience that does not know what it is watching. The film that follows has the same problem. Jason Bourne reunites Greengrass and Damon nine years after the Ultimatum and delivers a visually accomplished but narratively inert retread of the trilogy's established formula.
At a Glance
Director: Paul Greengrass
Runtime: 123 minutes
Starring: Matt Damon, Alicia Vikander, Tommy Lee Jones, Vincent Cassel, Julia Stiles
Release: 2016
Critics Rating: ★★ (2/5 stars, kinetically impressive but dramatically hollow)
Audience Rating: ★★½ (2.5/5 stars, disappointing)
Plot
Bourne, living off the grid and earning money in underground fighting circuits, is drawn back into the world of intelligence when Nicky Parsons contacts him with information about a new programme and about his father's involvement in the creation of Treadstone. The CIA, led by Director Robert Dewey, sends an asset to eliminate both of them. The plot is the franchise's most dramatically redundant, a narrative that retreads the established formula of Bourne discovering new information about his past and being pursued by CIA operatives with almost no real development or consequence. The father subplot is the film's central dramatic failure, a revelation of such limited emotional impact and insufficient development that it generates negligible engagement.
Characters
Bourne is given the franchise's least dramatically interesting material since The Bourne Legacy, a character whose arc is primarily physical rather than psychological. Damon plays the character with a physical commitment and screen presence that makes Bourne feel compelling in his action sequences, but the film does not give him the psychological complexity or moral dimension that made the trilogy's finest entries so rewarding. Alicia Vikander's Heather Lee is the film's standout new character, a CIA analyst of intelligence and moral ambiguity whose motivations are handled with enough complexity to make her the film's most interesting presence. Tommy Lee Jones's Director Dewey is the franchise's least dramatically interesting major villain, a CIA official of workmanlike menace and almost no psychological depth.
Meaning / Themes
The film gestures toward surveillance, privacy, and the relationship between security and freedom through a subplot involving a tech company's cooperation with the CIA's surveillance programme. This is a thematic concern of considerable contemporary relevance, but the film handles it with such superficiality and haste that it never generates real engagement.
Direction
Greengrass's direction is technically formidable, with a command of the handheld visual style and a feel for the film's global canvas that gives the action sequences a physical immediacy and urgency the more conventionally staged action films of its era conspicuously lacked. The Las Vegas car chase is the film's most visually ambitious and least dramatically purposeful action sequence, a demonstration of considerable technical skill in service of almost no real narrative weight. Greengrass pitches the film at a relentlessly urgent register, a decision that suits the director's established visual style but generates a hollowness when the pace is not supported by real dramatic weight. Jason Bourne has the visual energy and physical immediacy of the finest Greengrass entries, with action sequences staged with precision and physical clarity, but the absence of real stakes makes the urgency feel increasingly unearned as the film progresses. John Powell's score maintains the franchise's established sonic identity with a propulsive energy that suits the urgent register. Jason Bourne was a modest commercial success but a critical disappointment on its release, with most reviewers acknowledging the technical accomplishment of Greengrass's direction while noting the film's failure to add anything of real dramatic value to the franchise. It is now most frequently discussed alongside The Bourne Legacy as evidence of the franchise's post-trilogy creative decline.
Final Verdict: Visually accomplished but dramatically hollow, and a reminder of how much the trilogy's finest entries depended on genuine character stakes. Damon's physical commitment remains impressive, Vikander's Heather Lee is the film's most interesting new character, and Greengrass stages the action with his customary precision. But the father subplot never convinces, Dewey is the franchise's least compelling major antagonist, and Jason Bourne ultimately delivers the established formula without the intelligence or emotional weight that made the trilogy so rewarding.