Jason BourneFirst James Bond, then Ethan Hunt... now Jason Bourne. Of the three spy franchises driven off a cliff this year, this is the one that hurts the most. Ugh, could this have felt more stale? All the elements were tired... none more so than the main; Jason Bourne getting dragged back into another globetrotting pursuit as he learns in drips and drabs yet another "important" part of his past. Ultimatum was already getting a little tired in this formula, but worked because it felt like the resolution we had been building towards for so long. And it was! It was resolved! We're gonna dredge it back up again to learn about Jason's
dad? Who gives a fart?
What BORING casting Tommy Lee Jones is. And Vincent Cassell. And that actress who I've never seen before. And they're given such boring and typical roles to play. There is nothing surprising that happens with any of them, or in any of their choices.
The scoring is a travesty. As the film first begins you are teased with
terrific familiar sounds. They are so distinctive and have always given the series a wonderful atmopshere and depth. There's SO much promise in that first 50 seconds. So much history! What a great resource for a film to be able to draw on. To bad the film abandons it, never to be heard again, and replaces it with unmemorable generic action drivel. The film, per tradition, is bookended with the equally familiar and distinctive
Moby track. But after such an unexciting film experience that usually wonderful exclamation point felt more like a slap in the face. I yelled "UNEARNED!" when it played.
I didn't enjoy any of the sequences. Especially not the
driving in Vegas stuff. What was that?
I felt the film's biggest shortcoming was in failing to give that sense of zeroing in on Bourne. All the other films are masterful in how they shoot those scenes with all the techies in front of their computers crunching data, and someone pacing around the room giving orders, and how that cuts between them and Bourne, and how it feels like a real chase. The failings here come back to Tommy Lee Jones... he is such a statue in these scenes. I don't think he plays this part as well as Brian Cox or Straitharn or Joan Allen. He just doesn't seem to react to anything. He gets duped, nothing. He gets a new lead, nothing. He gives the scenes none of the tension needed. Seems like a directing problem. Like everyone turned up to try and crank out another film, but nobody really stopped to think about why the previous films worked.
Julia Stiles character, who I've always really enjoyed throughout the series, feels like a completely different character. Again, too much time away? I didn't like how they shoe-horned her into being a sort of catalyst for this movie, and then very predictably
kill her. If felt like it was done out of simplicity. Like nobody wanted to try and keep that many balls in the air.
Mad disappointing! I can see why it isn't nom'd for anything.
In hindsight it seems like a REALLY bad sign when a film like this doesn't have a thread in the Spoiler Edition subforum. Really bad.