Monday, August 8, 2016

Jason Bourne: A Review

The Bourne franchise has been fun and exciting; even the Renner substitution was entertaining. Identity. The strength of one individual. The organization that loses its soul. But the new Bourne with Matt Damon is a disappointment. Somehow all the same ingredients do not create the same taste and satiation.
There is the same frantic activity, the same savage combat, the same dark intensity--all of it well done. But there is something missing in this iteration. It opens as Bourne is staying alive in fight clubs while his old contact, Nicky Parsons (Julia Styles), gets wrapped up in an underground quasi-revolutionary group devoted to exposing the corruption of governments. She stumbles upon some information that might further explain Bourne's background, information that opens a new level of bad guys.
And they're off!
What develops is a weak and unbelievable plot line strung together with close-ups of violence, travel and a lot of walking around with surveillance. Some of the important motives are unclear even at the end and some allegiances are so uncertain they are simply ignored. One element is particularly difficult: There are virtually no good guys in this story. The entire government is a collection of misguided political fanatics or psychopaths. Their loosely organized opponents are cut from the same cloth. Even the clever Styles character has lost her warmth. The audience can not care much when the only smile is cynical. 
The technology is a problem as well. The audience is never sure of the capabilities of the gadgets in the story. One part of the story is a company with great surveillance possibilities. Are they real? Is the government using extraordinary real technologies or is it sci-fi? Bourne as a man in search for an identity is very different than a Bourne in a dystopic society.
The action scenes are good. The opening scene in a riot is terrific as are the mandatory chase scenes. But there is an element of repetition here, good but scenes we've seen before.
I have always liked Damon and this series and this movie was enjoyable. But there is a dissatisfaction in the mind of the audience when intensity is substituted for drama, drama I had grown to expect. Perhaps we already have had too many answers and the new questions were simply not enough to continue on. Perhaps, in true post-modern form, Bourne has become more important to himself than he is to us.
But it was good enough for a few hours in the afternoon.

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