 Tagline: You know his name Matt Damon returns to his most iconic role in Jason Bourne. Paul Greengrass, the director of The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, once again joins Damon for the next chapter of Universal Pictures' Bourne franchise, which finds the CIA's most lethal operative drawn out of the shadows. Damon is joined by Alicia Vikander, Vincent Cassel and Tommy Lee Jones, while Julia Stiles reprises her role in the series. Storyline: Jason Bourne is again being hunted by the CIA. It begins when Nicky Parson a former CIA operative who helped Bourne who then went under and now works with a man who's a whistle blower and is out to expose the CIA's black ops. So Nicky hacks into the CIA and downloads everything on all their Black Ops including Treadstone which Bourne was a part of. And Heather Lee, a CIA agent discovers the hack and brings it to the attention of CIA Director Dewey, the man behind the Black Ops. He then orders Parsons be found and hopefully Bourne too. Written by rcs0411@yahoo.com Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman, November 23, 2016 The much ballyhooed return of Matt Damon as Jason Bourne is an unwieldy, trite, and tiresome movie that places it in a class a notch or two below any of the films in Damon's previous Bournetrilogy. The succinctly, but appropriately, titled Jason Bourne is a victim of a serious lack of imagination. It's all frenzy and no freshness, a movie that's essentially one long chase sequence that once again puts a man on the move against an army of digital surveillance equipment and the people operating it in the field and behind the scenes. Director Paul Greengrass, returning to the franchise for the third time, keeps the film in motion but never takes the audience anywhere it hasn't been before. The entire movie plays out on cruise control, failing to find any spirit or creativity, content to unravel the Jason Bourne mystery a little further but paying no mind to the dizzying sense of repetition that courses through it. While Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) has recovered his memory, he's living in seclusion and only doing what he can to stay alive and stay ahead of those who would do him wrong. Meanwhile, Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) has hacked the CIA and is threatening to release its dirty laundry onto the web. She's also uncovered a number of truths about Bourne's past and his father's life and work in the agency. She brings him the information, placing a target on both their backs. As they try to escape from the all-seeing eyes of the world around them, the CIA's Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones) and Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander) make him their top target, all the while he's tracked by an old nemesis with a personal grudge. It's a sad fact that, generally speaking, there's precious little opportunity for unique storytelling anymore. It's all been done. But the Hollywood machine has to keep on churning. It seems like every theme has been explored and every action in support of those themes has been carried out in some form or fashion. Jason Bourne epitomizes all of that. The movie introduces Bourne as an underground fighter meant to compliment his strength and define his character's lost soul and quest for truth, turning to the core of who he is to get by, even as he tries to escape from it. Been there, done that. A roomful of intelligence operatives analyze the action from a million computer screens, barking out orders to zoom in, rewind, whatever it takes to catch their man remotely. Operatives on the ground speak into concealed microphones in urgent, hushed whispers about being in position and spotting the target. Bourne uses crowds, vehicles, anything to speed or mask his movements to his advantage. Shaky handheld cameras are meant to introduce both personalization and intensity to a scene. Car chases are big and loud but...they're just more Hollywood car chases. It's frankly almost baffling how a movie this mundane can get made, and how a sharp director like Paul Greengrass can allow it to snowball into one giant pile of derivative repetition. All of this kind of stuff was novel and unique back when Enemy of the State was introducing audiences to the digital surveillance future well head of its time. Now, movies like Jason Bourne are just late to the party. They're tiring rather than thrilling as they fruitlessly hope to dazzle viewers by regurgitating all of it again for the millionth time rather than find a new approach to an old idea. The movie does hold up from a technical perspective, at least depending on one's tolerance for Greengrass' and Cinematographer Barry Ackroyd's nonstop shaky cam and incessant toggling of the zoom switch. All of the various chases are slick and well produced, the technology in play is as cutting edge as it was more than a decade ago, and, well, it's a professional looking movie. Yet the cast appears super bored. All of the faux urgency is phoned in, and the actors seem content to allow the technical mechanics to do the work for them. All of the frenzy is generated from the camera. It's sort of like the opposite of The Asylum, the studio that never allows a moment to pass without score blaring in the background to try and ramp up some sense of enthusiasm, urgency, something to mask the emptiness playing out on the screen. Greengrass and Ackroyd do the same thing with the camera, constantly shaking, zooming, tilting, capturing action from up-close and skewered angles, anything and everything to hide the vacuous story and disinterested performances. It's a tiring movie in more ways than one, then, as the strain of the camera's jerking and the drain of the story's emptiness pile up to the point that walking out rather than waiting for it to end seems like the best option. Jason Bourne doesn't make an effort to stand apart or tell a unique story. It's very much a standard process sort of movie, appropriately (albeit forcibly) tense and gritty but neither structurally nor thematically novel. At its core, it makes for a logical progression of the story, but even as it explores the character and world a bit more deeply, the movie's superficialities can't carry it. It's completely derivative and nondescript within the genre and is more likely to leave the audience shaking heads and muttering "good grief, not all of this again" rather than standing up and cheering for yet another car chase, shaky cam close-up, or control room frenzy. Universal's Blu-ray is fine. It delivers expectedly high end video and audio, paired with a decent allotment of extra content. Fans of the film can buy with confidence. [CSW] -3.3- If you are looking for a good action movie set in the franchise then is a good one. The plot is the same as all the rest of them. Jason Borne vs the CIA. That's all it is. All it ever was. You really had to develop your own plot-line from the few breadcrumbs of a plot presented, but the tortured soul looking to understand the reason he is a tortured soul and if his farther played a role in making him that way worked for me. It won't work for everyone. Absent also were the crisp and clearly shot fight sequences that were a hallmark of the earlier films. There were huge plot holes like would the director of the CIA really dispatch a former asset to blithely kill ten or more of his own people just to get Bourne? Why did Julia hack the server in the first place? And it is a shame how that ended. If you are willing to take a leap of faith and overlook some of the obvious plot holes this is a fairly decent action movie. If not you may be very disappointed. [V4.5-A4.5] MPEG-4 AVC - D-Box at -4db unless you think you can take it. Cast Notes: Matt Damon (Jason Bourne), Tommy Lee Jones (CIA Director Robert Dewey), Alicia Vikander (Heather Lee), Vincent Cassel (Asset), Julia Stiles (Nicky Parsons), Riz Ahmed (Aaron Kalloor), Ato Essandoh (Craig Jeffers), Scott Shepherd (Director NI Edwin Russell), Bill Camp (Malcolm Smith), Vinzenz Kiefer (Christian Dassault), Stephen Kunken (Baumen), Ben Stylianou (Greek Van Driver), Kaya Yuzuki (Hacker), Matthew O'Neill (Lead Hub Tech [as Matthew O'Neil]), Lizzie Phillips (Cyber Hub Tech). IMDb Rating (12/25/16): 6.7/10 from 117,739 users
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