Jason Bourne is back in his lamest-titled movie yet! Matt Damon long said would only return if Supremacy and Ultimatum director Paul Greengrass did and he said he’d only return if they had a good enough story. Well, times (and finances) change. Nine years later, their third Bourne film together (the fourth featuring Damon and the fifth in the franchise) looks like an assembly of the series’ greatest hits, from brutal hand-to-hand combat, political undertones and spectacularly visceral car chases. In the same way, this trailer is like the greatest-hits-of-the-greatest-hits, giving glimpses of rogue assassins, gruff authority figures and inanimate household items-turned-deadly weapons. Pretty sweet!
Jason Bourne has the worst retirement plan ever
A big mystery opening the film is just what ole JB’s been up to during the nine-year hiatus. After seemingly concluding his journey in Ultimatum, what new roads awaited our hero? Turns out . . . he’s doing the same thing as before, i.e. being tortured about his past. Not exactly new territory for the character. It’s like when The Dark Knight Rises decided to bench Batman for eight years after The Dark Knight. Making your hero mope for extended periods to explain hiatuses is lame. Hopefully the film will contain a little more about the intervening period. Nine years is a long time to suffer from insomnia.
Blast from the past and/or sacrificial lamb?
Damon isn’t the only franchise alum to return as Julia Stiles – the only other actor to appear in all three previous Damon-starrers – is back as former CIA analysis Nicky Parsons, whose past with Bourne has only been hinted at. Perhaps we’ll get more info on that in this film, although the trailer seems to give away a lot here on what her role may be.
The trailer includes flashbacks to his past, which hilariously now includes the films we have already seen. Greengrass loves to crib from himself and the series, like throwing a bunch of pebbles in the pond to replicate the same ripples. The opening of the film in Greece appears reminiscent of The Bourne Supremacy’s, particular given what appears to occur next.
The new Chew Toy
Every Bourne film has a rival assassin and this one is no different. After Viggo Mortensen passed, Vincent Cassel picked up the role, who looks like he’s after Julia Stiles during the Greece riots. The whole sequence echoes when Karl Urban’s Kirill accidentally assassinated Bourne’s lover Marie (Franka Potente) in Supremacy, which also set into motion the events of that film. Is Nicky being set up as a similar catalyst for Bourne to go after Cassel and whatever else is driving the plot? Personally, I’m tired of female characters getting killed to provide motivation to male heroes. If revenge is the reason here, that’s lazy writing.
The New Expository CIA Agents
It wouldn’t be a Bourne film without people in dark rooms talking. Thankfully, the casting has always been superb and here is no different. This trailer has the first peek at Oscar-winner Alicia Vikander as a computer analyst with fellow newcomer Ato Essandoh appearing (unseen: Rogue One actor Riz Ahmed). Thankfully, this shot shows Vikander won’t be confined to a computer desk.
As for the plot, when the filmmakers used “post-Snowden” and “austerity-riddled Europe” to describe the film’s setting, they meant it literally. The film namedrops both Snowden and the austerity riots of Greece to frame the story about a CIA leak that implicates Bourne, bringing back on the radar.
No smiling allowed
The same way we always get a rival assassin, we always have a grizzled authority figure and nobody embodies that character more than Tommy Lee Jones, the walking manifestation of the word “gruff.” Here, he’s CIA Director Robert Dewey, who seems very pro-Jason Bourne (pre-Jason Bourne becoming all nah-Jason Bourne).
“I volunteered because of a lie” is what we’re told about Bourne’s motivation, indicating there’s more to be uncovered about his transformation into Treadstone assassin. Makes sense considering Nicky’s helpful delineation between “remembering” and “knowing.”
When you need to beat someone and there’s no magazine or towel around . . .
. . . break a leg off a chair!
“You’re never going to find any peace. Not until you admit to yourself who you really are.”
The glorious car chase! Due to the film’s production schedule, this was filmed was recently as last month in Las Vegas and promises a grand finale in the tradition of the series epic car chases (IMO, the very best cinema’s offered in the last decade so suck on that Matrix Reloaded). Bourne appears in pursuit of the SWAT truck causing all the damage. Freeze frames earlier in the trailer during a fight scene between Cassel and Damon show. with the former in a police vest possibly showing that he is the driver of the SWAT truck Bourne is after.
If they could synthesize Jason Bourne in its purest form, it would be this Jason Bourne trailer. That was pretty excellent!
