Review: Jason Bourne

Did the identity of Jason Bourne ever truly matter? The Bourne Trilogy - The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum - hinged on this MacGuffin but the point of Bourne was not who he was, but rather what he was. A riff of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Bourne was a seemingly ordinary man who discovered he was a killing machine recruited and trained by those lurking in the darkest corners of the government.

At the time of The Bourne Identity's release in 2002, the durable Bond franchise was in a bit of a crisis, having reached its cartoonish nadir with 1999's Die Another Day. Bond was showing his age, and was bordering on being laughable. Mission: Impossible had presented audiences with another alternative in the form of Ethan Hunt who, along with Bourne, stood in stark contrast to 007. Hunt and Bourne were grittier, relatively more rooted in realism - their successes showed that there were others who could replicate and even improve upon the formula. When Bond finally resurfaced in 2006's Casino Royale, it was a colder, edgier, more brutal Bond - one that finally felt of his time and not out of it and, Daniel Craig's casting aside, the revamp felt influenced by what both Doug Liman had done in The Bourne Identity and especially what Paul Greengrass wrought in The Bourne Supremacy.

Which is why Jason Bourne is a mixed blessing. It's a wholly unnecessary outing, considering how The Bourne Ultimatum resolved Bourne's character arc, and that sense of pointlessness permeates the film and exposes its recycling of plot and characters. That said, this fifth installment (if one counts 2012's The Bourne Legacy starring Jeremy Renner) is still a tremendously solid piece of filmmaking, breathlessly paced, stripped yet adrenalised, with expertly staged action sequences that are relentless in their frenetic propulsion.

It's been nearly a decade since Bourne vanished into anonymity after confronting those responsible for his memory loss. Earning money by bare-knuckle fighting in rural Greece, he's lured out of hiding by his former contact Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) who has hacked into the CIA's main frame and discovered two things: Bourne's father was somehow involved in Treadstone, the black-ops program that recruited Bourne, and the existence of a new ultra-secretive operation that could be far worse than Treadstone. Nicky's hack has been detected by CIA analyst Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander), who reports her findings to agency director Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones), who believes his shady dealings could be exposed by this turn of events.

Heather is one of the two new riveting characters that returning director Greengrass and co-screenwriter Christopher Rouse have created for this installment. Heather recalls Pamela Landy (Joan Allen), the Deputy Director with whom Bourne played cat and mouse in the second and third films. Like Pamela, Heather is highly capable and intelligent and more clear-eyed and perspicacious than those around her about Bourne's intentions, even if she also underestimates the extent of Bourne's capabilities. Heather is also ambitious and one of the fascinating elements of her character is how she is perpetually shifting allegiances to up her standing. If Bourne is a man of many identities but a blank slate, then Heather is a woman who assumes numerous masks to further solidify her name. Vikander is riveting throughout - seductive in her implorations to Bourne to come back into the fold, deferential without being obsequious to Dewey, but ever at the ready to seize opportunities for her own advancement.

The other new character of note is simply referred to as the Asset (Vincent Cassel), another contract killer birthed from Treadstone and deployed by Dewey to hunt down and eliminate Bourne once and for all. Assets have been part and parcel of the Bourne films, from Clive Owen's fatalistic Professor in the first film to Edgar Ramirez's more blinkered Paz in the third entry. The Asset departs from the norm in that he bears a more personal motivation for accomplishing his latest mission and he is a more equal opponent to Bourne. When they finally meet in earnest, the ensuing brawl is brutal in its beauty and savage in its efficiency.

More than anything else, the true stars of the Greengrass-helmed Bournes are the behind-the-scenes crew, notably cinematographer Barry Ackroyd and Rouse, who also serves as editor. They all come together to craft the jittery, sensory assault that is a pure distillation of film as image and motion. Bodies crash, punch, and pierce into frame like bullets. Faces blur and come into focus, limbs are almost symphonic in their rhythm of movement, the action is shredded, reassembled, granulated, and shattered once again.

Greengrass and crew are arguably peerless when it comes to mounting complex and chaotic set pieces - the chase through Athens is exceptionally superlative, every corner crammed with protestors, riot police, high-pressure water nozzles, and contained conflagrations. Yet the action doesn't have to be large-scale to impress - the relatively brief and simple sequence of Bourne falling off a roof is as gasp-inducing as the Las Vegas-set finale, a free-for-all pursuit that is outlandish in its escalations.

If Jason Bourne is an inescapably superfluous installment, it at least provides another chance to appreciate Greengrass' skills. For Greengrass, the pursuits are mating dances and their effectiveness lies in the prolonged foreplay as characters continually on the brink of convergence orbit this way and that before finally yielding to each other's gravitational pull.

Jason Bourne

Directed by: Paul Greengrass

Written by: Paul Greengrass, Christopher Rouse; based on the characters created by Robert Ludlum

Starring: Matt Damon, Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander, Vincent Cassel, Julia Stiles, Riz Ahmed, Ato Essandoh, Scott Shepherd, Bill Camp, Vinzenz Kiefer, Gregg Henry