Jason Bourne

DVD, Jason Bourne (2016) film

Ironically, the only Bourne film I ever saw at the cinema was the underwhelming disappointment, 'The Bourne Legacy,' which was the studio's attempt to turn the successful trilogy of Matt Damon-starring films into a cinematic universe without Matt Damon. Bourne without Bourne was a case of removing the 'u' and the 'n,' and was the reason I never went to see this fifth instalment on the big screen, knowing I could eventually pick it up cheaply on DVD. This time they were bringing back Damon to his rightful place at the centre of the series, but I had concerns as soon as I heard the name was avoiding the Robert Ludlum novel titles convention and making it as basic as could be: 'Jason Bourne.' I can see why they did it, since 'Legacy' had sullied the franchise and they wanted to distance it from that, the simplest way being to focus down to the most basic, but I hoped the film wouldn't follow such an unimaginative trend through its story, character and subtle emotions and morals. Because Bourne has always been a moral character, somehow struggling through all the pain and anguish of the life his memory loss protected him from, and that's why he's so likeable, because he has these vulnerabilities, but manages to do The Right Thing. He wasn't just another action hero, he was damaged, and susceptible, and so we cheer him on even more that he can persevere.

It's not just that he can do cool stuff that we admire, taking out bad guys, anticipating and adapting at lightning speed, pulling all kinds of tricks out of his experience and instinct, but that he has a moral compass, doesn't kill if there's no need to as he struggles to survive another day and find some kind of peace. The content of the story of this film was always going to be a difficulty, because the original three films covered every major aspect of his old life as an assassin, the memories resurfacing, and the root of it all, so where else was there to go? 'The Bourne Ultimatum' ended so wonderfully that as much as I wanted to see more of the characters, I felt like it was the perfect conclusion and that it might be best if they left it there with the character's subsequent life unknown, another reason I had the impression this latest release was to be a money-grab, without the dramatic necessity or drive to be able to reach the satisfaction and quality of storytelling of the third film. Why bring back Bourne if you aren't going to discover something new about him, and the reviews suggested that this was exactly the case, a stripped down, action-focused motivation that wouldn't do justice to the trilogy.

Unfortunately it genuinely was more retread-stone than Treadstone, a rehashing of past glories in an effort to remind us why we liked Bourne and his actions in the world he inhabits. But you could probably almost make the film with clips from past entries in the series it was so over-familiar: like the filmmakers, the American government hadn't learned from the past and now are planning another black ops programme in the Treadstone and Blackbriar mould, this one called Iron Hand (although it looked like there were several others on the list, too), and Nicky Parsons has become a hacktivist, joining an organisation that wants to expose such government naughtiness, and she hopes to enlist Bourne to once again make it clear that such things are not to be accepted. In the intervening years since we saw him he's gone a bit Sylvester Stallone in 'Rambo III,' fighting for a living to block the memories and past with pain, but as Dr. Hirsch predicted in one of the Treadstone files, he'll eventually reach a tipping point where life is meaningless without the agency to work for. Yeah, right.

Heather Lee, a computer whizz at the CIA thinks she can get Bourne to come in, but it proves useless, the final flourish, or the closest thing they could get to it, is Bourne one-upping her genuine wish for him to rejoin the agency by replaying a conversation she'd just had with the boss, Director Russell. It might have left the story in a more interesting place if she hadn't said Bourne might need to be put down, and he had agreed to come and work for them, setting up the sequels for years to come. But let's knock that idea down right now: the truth is they should have stayed at three films and left it at that because this is nowhere close to being a satisfying story that would make it worthwhile bringing back Jason, and undoing some of the greatness of that great 'Ultimatum' ending by doing further damage. In the same way that 'Legacy,' quite apart from failing to provide a compelling continuation, put a favourite character, Pam Landy, out of the picture (I can't remember whether she was killed or just ended up in prison, as I haven't revisited the film since it came out in 2012), they do the same to the only other person of note, wiping out Nicky to provide some drama. This series is hardly the place for good deaths, the hero cradling the victim's head in his arms before her eyes flutter away, so I felt it was fitting for her to die in such a manner, but sadly, she'd fallen victim to the worst death of being reduced to a plot device, the motivation to get an uninterested Bourne back in the game. I liked that her dying breath was to warn him not to come closer, a reminder of her selfless nature (she also appears to have become something of an agent herself, proactive and able to take care of herself in a physical confrontation).

So Bourne has a reason to 'suit up' again, back in black to beat the bads, with Director Dewey, whom we'd never heard of before, his target. So you get the scene where the wrinkled old visage is waiting in a room, sitting at a desk with gun at the ready, waiting for the approach of his nemesis. You get a resurfacing memory, where they do a creditable job of making Damon look much younger, the day his Father was killed. You get characters gazing moodily into mirrors; bike chase; car chase; car rammed by another vehicle side-on… All the usual bits and pieces are there, and at first I did find myself drawn in with the usual musical pulse beating time to the clicking keyboards and flicking camera, but somewhere, perhaps about an hour in, I realised I was becoming somewhat removed from the film, even a little bored. Granted, things didn't exactly pan out to the predictions my brain was jumping to - I thought Nicky would be kidnapped and held by the CIA and there'd be a daring rescue, all part of a plot to lure Jason in. I also thought Lee, the young hotshot that gets in on the mission, had a personal grudge. Maybe she'd be the daughter of one of the people Bourne had killed, or someone she knew was collateral in all the chases and scrapes he got into, but in fact they were merely replacing Pam Landy for a younger woman, someone that was working for the good, not necessarily the same goal of those in charge. Although disappointed not to succeed totally by getting Bourne back in, it was definitely in her best interests, as anyone that has dealings with him either dies or ends up in prison!

I ask myself what was missing to make this on a par with the other films, instead of a second so-so entry, which I, and I hate to say this, would put in the same category as 'Legacy.' It was nice to have Damon back, and good to see he got into shape for it, while in other recent films he'd let himself go a bit. But he's fighting fit and only a touch of grey in the hair tells you that nine years had passed since 'Ultimatum.' Ironically, he's probably close to the age of the original character in Ludlum's books, who was an older man with a family, if I recall correctly. It's a shame they didn't take something of that and have him actually settled somewhere with wife and children, just to give him more to lose instead of a guy who could die and it wouldn't make that much difference to anyone. Of course, as usual, he comes close, with the best stunt being a fall from a five-storey building, catching a wire, wrapping it around himself, and thumping into a metal shutter. That's one of the things missing, or at least far less pronounced than it used to be: realism. The Bourne films could be said to have changed the action genre. You only have to look at how both the other big spy series' reacted to the first two Bourne films, with 'M:I3' and especially the Bond reboot, 'Casino Royale,' adopting the frenetic, into-the-fray handheld action camera style and physical toll on the heroes, in an attempt to be part of the zeitgeist. But is that still the zeitgeist, or has it become the norm, the standard fare?

I think perhaps this film, while looking good, plenty of nice aerial shots of places and buildings, as you'd expect, and especially the chaos of a full-on, protestors versus riot police, smoke and fireworks in the dark, had the impression of being somehow dated. The music sounded as if it had been culled directly from the other films, no apparent attempt to create a new theme or develop the existing ones, even the end credits were just a rehash of 'Ultimatum's development of the shooting lines. I admit, it's hard to criticise a film for being like its forbears, because how can you make something new and different, yet that appeals to the fanbase, or the audience that have followed what came before? I don't know how they managed it, but 'Ultimatum' did just that, bigger, better, but also with a finality to it. While I was initially invested in a story about Richard Webb, Bourne's Father, having created Treadstone, and been killed for some reason, it never went anywhere. The film was a good few minutes longer than the others, but they didn't spare any time to show any depth to Bourne as they did so ably in the original trilogy. He scowled a lot and marched about in his usual way, but, aha! It was the lack of invention that was missing. The fire extinguisher to the lock, the hook on the boat, the protest march to cover a meet, the slipping of secret phone into unsuspecting pocket. He just didn't seem to use his environment as intelligently as before. In fact, some of those things were in this, but they'd been done before, and better. They needed to keep coming up with clever, intuitive courses of action, and while there was the occasional whiff of that, like setting off the fire alarms to disguise a meet, it was a variation and uncommon.

Does this mean they'd exhausted the toolbox of ideas for Bourne? Or was it just that they were under time pressures and hadn't been able to come up with new tricks and devices. They even resort to high-tech gadgetry that looked a little 'Mission: Impossible' in its improbability: that Bourne could record a conversation from several metres away from inside a car. You can pick apart any film, and it's not my intention to do that, but I have to admit to an ultimately unsatisfied nagging that this was a wasted opportunity. I'm sure everyone involved put in their best efforts, you can even see Greengrass had pulled back a little on the intense shake of the camera - the meeting in a restaurant of Dewey and Deep Dream internet company founder Aaron Kalloor was almost stable while they were talking! And I liked that they revisited some of the places Bourne had been before, especially London (although I'd never been to Paddington Plaza, unlike Waterloo Station in 'Ultimatum'). They even tried to give him a different opponent with the unnamed 'Asset,' who was far from being an asset to his profession, killing his own agents to make Bourne seem worse, and having a personal vendetta. But it became a little too much when, as well as being the guy Bourne was responsible for getting caught and tortured in the past, he also turned out to be the guy, years before that, who'd killed Bourne's Dad. These assets are fine for a while, but how long can you care about a nasty agent with no name: we know he's bad by the fact that he watches football on TV while he's got a hostage in his bath!

Back to the realism, though. Both Bourne and Mr. Asset were not young men, but they experience a ridiculous crash, Asset's stolen SWAT van taking Bourne's borrowed car into a building's facade and both emerge unscathed. A few minutes later they're running around and having a prolonged fight in a dark tunnel. Perhaps it's nitpicking to comment on it, especially after so many fights we've seen in the series, but none of the confrontations in this film were a patch on the attack on the country house in the first film, or the battle with Desh in an apartment that was so cool in 'Ultimatum.' Granted, it is more realistic that Bourne takes out most people he comes up against in seconds, but when even the fight sequences aren't impressing, you know something's wrong. The criticism I've heard that Bourne hardly says anything is valid, but wouldn't have mattered if the story had been up to snuff. So Jason's Dad was killed because he realised his son had been selected and he didn't like the way the programme was going? Why had we never heard of Dewey before? [Other incredulous questions I can't think of right now]?

They were so desperate to wipe the stain of 'Legacy' from the legacy our minds were left with, that they failed to make a worthy successor. It clearly wasn't enough to bring back Damon and Greengrass, something more was required. The best thing would have been to let sleeping dogs lie, or at least take the opportunity to pull another rabbit out of the hat, if they could. But lightning rarely strikes twice, and it did not in this case, making me glad I never made the effort to see it at the cinema. Oddly, all the previous films except 'Legacy' I first saw on DVD, so I couldn't even make that excuse for this one, that it didn't have the cinematic grandeur needed for a first viewing experience. It could be just me, and my advancing age that has made so many franchise films seem a little tiresome and repetitive: 'Star Trek,' 'Star Wars,' 'Mission: Impossible,' Batman and any other superhero films… They've all disappointed to the same degree. Maybe I have loyalty to the earlier products and still watch them, which means I don't have room for more of the same, but it could be that these films are becoming too samey, safe and, ultimately generic. That's why 'Interstellar' impressed me so much, being different to what I'd seen. Trouble is, a fickle audience being asked to pay ten quid for the privilege of seeing the latest flick is going to choose a safe bet, so filmmakers do what's expected. No longer on the cutting edge, the Bourne films have stayed in the past, and it's sad to see.

**