Review: Jason Bourne
Matt Damon was born to play Jason Bourne, a hypercompetent and nearly invincible former assassin eluding the dark and powerful forces that created him. But this movie is a formulaic mess with a script that revisits every trope of the genre.
Cybercrime is a big theme this time around, and of course the movie is replete with silly tech-nonsense, from unlimited image enhancement to firewall-hacking progress bars and magical cell phones that can be remote-activated to delete data on nearby laptops. One needn’t set the bar as high as Mr. Robot to find more persuasive depictions of hacking and, well, computers.
The film tries hard to respond to current themes like the Snowden revelations and the FBI/Apple encryption controversy – but it’s like filtering reality through the brain of an idiot with access to unlimited special effects.
At one point, the sentence “This could be worse than Snowden” must of course be uttered. Why not go all the way and use a Snowden scale? “Is this half a Snowden?” “This could be 2 Snowdens. Maybe 3.” “It’s a Snowdenpocalpyse! Sharknado with Snowdens!”
Spoilers for all Bourne movies, including this one, follow.
But worst of all, the movie is a cheap rehash of previous plots: a lady from the previous movies dies, an evil old white Director-type tries to kill everyone in his way, an “asset” (assassin) is “activated” to take out Bourne, a new lady agent may become an ally, Bourne has to fight the asset to the death after a car chase that would have turned him into a quadriplegic about sixteen times.
A bit of that is fine (and any Bourne movie will have a car chase like that), but the formula is too obvious and too in-your-face, and the storyline layered on top of it is so thin and dumb that it doesn’t offer much to distract the viewer.
If this movie brings an end to the Damon/Bourne franchise, it may be for the best. It will be hard to revive it from this one. To be sure, there are some fun moments that remind us of what could have been – and picking Vegas as the target for the movie’s climax was a nice touch.
But those moments are too few, and the cringeworthy script too dominant. As usual, Moby sings “Extreme Ways” as the credits roll: “I would stand in line for this.” Don’t.