And he’s leaner, meaner and better than ever in this terrific thriller
inner tempo of the movie. Is everybody moving fast enough or are they moving too fast?”
You’re not likely to be aware of these considerations when you’re watching his films precisely because he has thought them out so well that you are just gripped and carried along. For his f i l ms combine l urc hi ng handheld cameras staying with a scene for longer than seems possible with fast edits that actually take you closer into what’s happening, unlike the random jump-cuts of less focused film-makers.
While the world has been turned into a system of non-stop surveillance, and mistrust of all governments has been growing, Bourne has been living under the radar, still a deeply tormented man. We first see him earning his living as a bare-knuckle fighter on the GreekAlbanian border. In one contest, he suddenly and decisively walks forward and knocks out a fearsome challenger with his first punch, as we know he can. In another, however, he is masochistically taking a beating, perhaps out of guilt and self-loathing. Then he spots in the watching crowd one of the few of his old colleagues who he ever trusted, Nicky Parsons ( Julia Stiles) and promptly dispatches his opponent.
Nicky has hacked the CIA’s files and come to tell Bourne what she has discovered about Operation Treadstone and in particular the role his own father played in it (this Oedipal drama is perhaps necessary t o B o u r n e ’s motivation in returning to attack the organisation again but it’s the film’s weakest link).
However, while getting this information Nicky has immediately come to the attention of the CIA, who now have inc redible powers of real-time surveillance around the world and want still more (there’s a subplot about them compromising the privacy settings of a social network company called Deep Dream, as it might be Facebook, led by a rebellious CEO called Aaron Kalloor, played by Riz Ahmed).
The CIA director, Robert Dewey, turns out to be our old friend Tommy Lee Jones, in fully malevolent mode. At a wild guess. I’d say that TLJ has not been consistently applying SPF50 sunblock throughout his 69 years in Texas. To call the incredible corrugations and pouches of his skin leathery is unfair to any good quality leather. He makes a saltwater crocodile look like a tender baby. His eyes are hard black stones.
He unleashes on Bourne and Nicky not only large teams of agents but his most deadly assassin, known simply as The Asset, a man with a deeply personal reason for wanting to take out Bourne, played with hatchet-faced determination and almost no words by Vincent Cassel (La Haine, Mesrine). Oddly enough, when he does finally speak, he seems Scottish, although this of course only makes him all the more frightening.
But Dewey and The Asset are undermined from within. The cyber head at the CIA, Heather Lee, wants to do good. Heather is played by Alicia Vikander.
One of my fellow-reviewers, whose verdicts I have otherwise nearly always agreed with, said she was “very prettily mi s c a s t ” h e re . S uc h nons e ns e ! A