Written by: Paul Greengrass & Christopher Rouse
Stars: Matt Damon, Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander, Vincent Cassel, Julia Stiles
Plot: The CIA's most dangerous former operative is drawn out of hiding to uncover more explosive truths about his past. (IMDB)
The 4th installment of Matt Damon's Bourne saga, simply titled Jason Bourne, is the new film from director Paul Greengrass. Not counting the Bourne Legacy, this film rounds out the quartet of action films that so far, I've really been enjoying. However, Legacy was disappointing in aspects. Nonetheless, I was anticipating watching this entry of Bourne's story. At 2 hrs and 3 minutes, the film is the 2nd longest Bourne film, with the 1st being Legacy.
After exposing Blackbriar (in 'The Bourne Ultimatum'), Bourne has been hiding out in Greece for the past eight years. He engages in hand-to-hand combat with other men as a bare-knuckle fighter to make a living. In Iceland, Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) goes to a secure location with other hackers and whistle-blowers. She gets into the CIA's mainframe servers and downloads the Black Ops files. Simultaneously in Langley at CIA headquarters, Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander), the head of the Cyber Ops Division, sees what's going on and reports it to her superiors. As Heather tries to fix the problem, Nicky looks through the classified files on the CIA's programs, starting with Treadstone. It contains previously unknown information regarding Bourne, as well as his father, Richard Webb (Gregg Henry). It turns out that the CIA had David Webb under surveillance before he volunteered for Treadstone. Nicky gets what she needs and burns the evidence. Meanwhile, Heather speaks to CIA director Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones) about the situation. They suspect that this involves Bourne. Dewey fears that Bourne could jeopardize their latest program, Iron Hand. He contacts a former Blackbriar operative known only as the Asset (Vincent Cassel). He holds a personal grudge against Bourne, considering him a traitor for leaving the program and outing their actions to the world. Dewey orders the Asset to go after Bourne. Elsewhere, a convention being held for a program called Deep Dream with its founder, Aaron Kalloor (Riz Ahmed), being one of the main guests to speak. Deep Dream is meant to be a social media program intended to give consumers the utmost privacy in their activities and businesses but Kalloor has been secretly working with Dewey and the CIA. Dewey wants to use Deep Dream for surveillance purposes through Iron Hand, which Kalloor is not comfortable with.
The film has a very Snowden era feel to it. Themes of whistleblowers and hackers are seen throughout the film, giving it an espionage style as well. When we first see Nicky, she is trying to hack into the CIA in a secure hacker/whistleblower location. At one point of the film, Aaron Kallour tells Director Dewey, "privacy is freedom", giving the character a "Snowden personality". Matt Damon is great again as Bourne, this time using gadgets designed to hack into systems. Julia Stiles is once again great as Nicky. We get some new faces in this film, with Alicia Vikander, Tommy Lee Jones, Vincent Cassel, Riz Ahmed. All of these actors give great performances, especially Vincent Cassel, who plays the adversary for Bourne this go-around. Cassel and Damon have a great fight scene at the very end. There are cool chase scenes shot in this film, with locations spreading across Iceland, Greece, and even the United States.
Parts of the movie feels slow, but tension between scenes are still there. The film doesn't have the fresh ideas of the first 3 films, and it relies on flashbacks a little too much (in my opinion). While I praised the cinematography style of the second and third Bourne films, I was distracted by the style here, as it added a little too much shaky cam at times. The film is enjoyable though, but there were some aspects that didn't sit well with me. The film is definitely the weakest of Damon's quartet, but it is more enjoyable than Legacy.
7/10
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