The man stands at U.S. customs, having flown in from Europe. His passport gets a hard look from the official, and the man is nervous: after all, he’s traveling under a false name and is hunted by the CIA.
But the official waves him through with an informal, “Welcome home, sir.” In a rare quiet moment, Jason Bourne lets the strangeness of those words register.
How long has it been since Jason Bourne was home? What does home even mean for this rootless character? We’re not sure, but it’s been nine years since Matt Damon played the once-amnesiac spy—which makes “Jason Bourne” a true homecoming.
Reuniting with director Paul Greengrass, Damon takes another breathless turn around the spy genre. The movie is confusing without actually having much plot, but it triumphs as a series of interlocking suspense scenes.
The CIA director (Tommy Lee Jones) and his ambitious new espionage analyst (Alicia Vikander, the Oscar winner from “The Danish Girl”) locate the long-missing Bourne in Greece, where he’s stayed under the radar.
Bourne’s old colleague (Julia Stiles) is about to leak classified information that could out-Snowden Snowden, and she draws Bourne out of hiding.
Meanwhile, the CIA chief leans on a Silicon Valley hotshot (Riz Ahmed, from “Four Lions”) to try to get access to the entire world’s private information.
Forget about ISIS or Russia; there aren’t any international threats here. There aren’t even many personal motivations, except for the CIA assassin (Vincent Cassel) who considers Bourne a traitor. I was never clear on what Vikander’s character sought to get out of the whole thing.
The film is so stripped down it never lets up. We simply move from one tense action sequence to the next, all rendered in Greengrass’s jittery style.
After a while it becomes clear that the cat-and-mouse strategies exist only for their own sake — the CIA needs to cover its assets, and Bourne needs to stay alive. It’s a portrait of futility, which might just be the point.
Greengrass and Damon flopped with their non-Bourne film, “Green Zone,” which was heavy-handedly political. “Jason Bourne” relies on fast, bruising action that rarely pauses—the social comment is in the background.
But it’s always there. The movie depicts a world of eye-in-the-sky spying where everything is visible and privacy is a thing of the past. Painting that picture in a movie that offers this much entertainment doesn’t lessen its disturbing implications.
“Jason Bourne” (3 stars)
Matt Damon returns to the role of the amnesiac spy, here targeted by CIA higher-ups (Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander) in a bruising, exciting cat-and-mouse game. The film is basically a series of interlocking suspense scenes, although the portrait of a world where privacy is a thing of the past is compelling.
Rating: PG-13, for violence
Showing: Alderwood, Alderwood Mall, Cinebarre, Everett Stadium, Galaxy Monroe, Marysville, Stanwood Cinemas, Meridian, Pacific Place, Thornton Place, Woodinville, Blue Fox Drive-in, Cascade Mall, Oak Harbor Plaza
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