‘Bourne’ appears to have forgotten something
When Jason Bourne hits Las Vegas, not even the slot machines are safe from the destruction that follows in his action-hero wake.
Following the forgettable spinoff of sorts The Bourne Legacy with Jeremy Renner, Matt Damon returns for the fourth time as the formidable and laconic American superspy in director Paul Greengrass’ Jason Bourne ( out of four; rated PG-13; eeEE in theaters nationwide Friday). The latest globetrotting affair is about as creative as its title: With the exception of a wild car chase through the Strip and a timely plot point dealing with surveillance in a post-Snowden world, the movie is a by-the-numbers action film that’s not nearly as strong as its Damon-led predecessors.
The first three Bourne movies are a well-told and complete trilogy about an amnesiac protagonist kicking a heck of a lot of butt on the way to getting his memo- ries back. There’s a certain appeal missing when he reappears years later in a world of global intrigue with his brain fully intact and doing just fine on the world underground-fighting circuit, though still a wanted man in the CIA’s eyes.
Jason’s hacker pal Nicky Parsons (a returning Julia Stiles) steals a bunch of classified files that involve the program that made Bourne a master assassin, a new initiative with some questionable ethics, and the specifics on how Bourne’s family ties into his recruitment. That puts our favorite fugitive back on the radar of CIA director Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones) and ambitious agent Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander).
Heather wants to figure out a way to bring Bourne in from the cold; Dewey would rather that his assassin — a CIA asset called, yes, Asset (Vincent Cassel) — put a bullet in Bourne’s newly recharged noggin; and meanwhile, the government is pushing tech guru Aaron Kalloor (Riz Ahmed) to use his mega-popular Deep Dream social media platform to gather information on its users.
As fun as it is watching Bourne speed through Vegas in a Dodge Charger in hot pursuit of an enemy in a SWAT truck — and said truck does some seriously gnarly damage to a casino lobby — the nuance of the privacy angle and a hinted prior relationship between Heather and Aaron is juicy stuff set aside in favor of more explosions and fisticuffs.
That said, Greengrass very much delivers on the machismo front, as does Damon. At 45, the A-lister seems to be following the Tom Cruise route of getting more action-packed with age. But the script by Greengrass and Christopher Rouse doesn’t utilize his bevy of charms. He has all of 37 lines — mostly along the lines of “Drive” and “What do you want?” — so if you’re a fan of strong and silent Bourne, this is for you.
The previous films put Bourne as top dog on the spycraft hierarchy — even Daniel Craig ’s more recent James Bond efforts seemed to pull some punches from the American’s playbook. But renewing the franchise without the major gateway into the character, formerly an underdog who didn’t know why he had killer moves, is no way to hit the superspy jackpot.