Why I am dropping out of the Bourne program?
I was disappointed by Jason Bourne (2016). The film could have come in at 1hr 35. The gap between the Athens and Las Vegas car chase was huge and boring. Worse of all I did not get at all tense watching this film. Surprising, especially as Paul Greengrass directed United 93 (2006) and Bloody Sunday(2002) both of which were tense and thoughtful.
Some compare Bourne to Bond. In previous outings Bourne gave us a grittier character than Bond. Even though the latter is trying to be grittier. Despite the Athens and Las Vegas car chases neither could match the opening of Spectre (2015) with the helicopter hovering over the mass crowd in Mexico City. That was tense.
My advice if you go to see Jason Bourne you could easily sleep between the film’s two main action sequences. First Athens then Vegas, you would get a good hours worth of sleep. Though if you’ve paid top ticket prices for places like the Odeon Leicester Square this might not be a good use of your hard earned money.
When Jason Bourne did slow down it was to repeatedly go back in time to the moment his dad was killed in a supposed terrorist attack. This was like the films Rosebud moment. The problem was it kept going back time again to this Rosebud moment to the point I stopped caring.
To make the film contemporary the plot weaves in the issue of privacy with a cliche palimpsest of Zuckerberg. Jason Bourne has it’s Deep Dream social network. This would not be out of place in Eggers satire of social media ‘The Circle’ (David Eggers, 2013).
Tommy Lee Jones plays the CIA director Dewey but adds no gravitas to the role other than barking out orders. The film’s script is about 70% barking out orders; ‘zoom in’ ‘isolate all social media coming from Zeuss street in Athens’ and like a lapsed member of the National Trust Bourne is asked to ‘come back into the programme’.
I am afraid as a film goer I am dropping out of the Bourne programme.
