We’ve already has ‘Steve Jobs’ earlier this year and now we have ‘Jason Bourne’ neither of which are particularly dynamic names and in fact Jason Bourne’s real name in the film is David Webb and short of a film being called John Smith or David Jones you’d be hard pushed to find anything more bland except the new Bourne film is anything but.
It’s been nine years since Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass teamed up for their last Bourne film and since then we’ve had Jeremy Renner in ‘The Bourne Legacy’ and now the pair are back together in the fifth film in the trilogy which seems odd as there was a very definite end to the third film but audiences have been crying out for more.
Starting off with Matt Damon voiceover saying, ’I still remember’ when he clearly doesn’t as he spends the rest of the film trying to remember the real circumstances about his father death having been killed by terrorists in the 80’s which, according to his old CIA contact Nicky (Julia Stiles), is not the case. Add to the mix a social media guru( Riz Ahmed) who made a pact with the devil in the form of CIA director (Tommy Lee Jones) who is as menacing as ever with his southern drawl and a face like two lumps of coals in a cliff and a new agent (Alicia Vikander) who takes on the case of location Bourne only to find that the agency is not what she thought it would be and an assassin (Vincent Cassel) hell bent on carrying out the CIA’s orders to eliminate Bourne.
Fans of the original trilogy may be a little disappointed by this latest entry as the plot is easily guessed and there’s not really that much dialogue in this with drug enthusiast Pete Doherty having snorted more lines than Damon has to say here. In a post Snowdon era about secrecy there is an decent scene between Jones and Ahmed centring around the need for privacy balanced against the need for State security.
But it’s the action which is standout here with Greengrass proving once again how ruthlessly efficient he can execute a car chase of which there are two here both excellent and one which is so insanely exciting it takes your breath away.
But this being about modern day espionage we get the ubiquitous, ‘Copy that!’ & ‘Roger that!’ and computers loom large so you have all the usual IT jiggery pokery and cries of, ‘It’s been breached’ and the slightly more dubious, ‘He’s entered our back door!’ The plotline we’ve seen before – Copy that! and Alicia Vikander is the new eye candy – Roger that! (You’re fired! – Ed). There’s not quite the inventiveness of the previous outings in its use of everyday items as lethal weapons and it’s still got ear piece wearing operatives talking into their fists and like Bond this flits around the world and it surely can’t be long before Greengrass is obliged to do a Bond film but until then this will do nicely.
Here’s the trailer:
