Day 257: Wednesday Reviews - The Bourne Legacy

0115 and I’m full of cold, exhausted from work, but I have to write something about The Bourne Legacy. Commitments. Gotta keep those commitments.

The steady decline of the Bourne franchise continues unabated with this fourth installment, which sees Matt Damon’s eponymous hero replaced by similarly hench yet likeable stud Jeremy Renner, for a two-hour parade around worn motifs and action thriller tropes.

The motivations are clear, yet surface deep. After Bourne’s antics in previous films, the shadowy organisations from which he has been running decide to shut down their programmes, killing off their operatives and covering their tracks. Renner’s Aaron Cross is one such operative, who survives the assassination attempt, and must then… well, run away. It’s as simple as that, really.

Unlike Bourne, Cross is pharmacologically enhanced, and needs his little green and blue pills every day to keep his senses preternaturally honed. Thus he must not just disappear, but go find a new supply, which brings him back within reach of the agencies hunting him. And then there’s a scientist, Dr Marta Shearing, played by Rachel Weisz, who has been studying the effects of the drugs on the operatives, and she also survives the clean up operation, and is then thrown together with Cross, and the two of them sneak into facilities, run away from local police, escape hit men on motorbikes, and do all that stuff that heroes and audience-surrogate characters do together.

The moments of action are well filmed, and there’s nothing egregious about any of it, the actors, which group also includes Ed Norton as the get-stuff-done mission commander for the agency, all put in strong performances, the set pieces are thrilling, and the directorial style by series writer Tony Gilroy, toning down the shaky cam excesses of Paul Greengrass’s work on Bournes 2 and 3, retains the urgency while providing more clarity - but the series is pretty much in the weeds by now.

Gone is that brilliant hero’s journey from the original, which essentially found a way to externalise tension between the yearnings of the inner self and the pressures of the outer other into a kickass spy thriller - that’s been forgotten, as has the grounded action, the relatable protagonist, and in its place is a moderately successful but generic action film.

The pacing is off as well. Individual scenes work well, but the flow of the overall narrative doesn’t feel right. It’s an hour into the two-hour film before Cross and Shearing link up and Ed Norton’s team begin hunting them - and it’s 1h15m before we have the requirements of Cross vis-a-vis his daily drug dosage explained to us. That should be baked into the script far earlier, its repercussions explored through the unfolding narrative - as it is the drug dependence only exists to provide motivation for visiting one locale, and then an anticipated scene where Cross gets dizzy and loses focus and has flashbacks to his time as a recruit, right as, in the present moment, Shearing needs him most. Its tangential, and easily resolved, and thus provides little peril or opportunity to burrow to the core of Cross’s character.

And then it’s not until the film’s climax when a counter asset, a test subject for a new programme even more advanced than the one from which Cross has escaped, which agency bosses assumed was still in the planning phase, is called into play. This trope of the antagonistic asset worked in the first film, when played matter-of-factly by Clive Owen. He was the shadow-self archetype, the dark brother, and he provided a great sense of mounting pressure and approaching conflict as the noose tightened around Bourne. By this film the concept is dog-tired and dull, a cliche shorn of its original vitality.

And that’s the general feeling of the film. It’s not bad, but it’s empty of whatever spark initially lit the franchise. Jeremy Renner does as well as can be expected, though he’s never given room for Cross to become much more than the soldier at the peak of fitness he is when we first see him.

The final chase scene is fun. Everything rumbles to a sufficiently satisfying conclusion. But it’s a far cry from the heights of the original. Better than 2016’s execrable Jason Bourne, though. At least you can say that about it.

And now I really am done with left-wing spy films championing individualism in the face of state control. Think I'm going to watch Roma next week, and hopefully won't leave it so late. I can but hope.

...... 

Music: He War, by Cat Power.

Day 112: Bourne Supremacy

Right-o let's get to it, lots to cover and it's stupid late at night already. Here are my jumbled thoughts on the second Jason Bourne film, 2004's The Bourne Supremacy. There will be spoilers, if you care about that.

After a first film that came out swinging from its opening shot, the sequel gets off to a shakier start. It's a prosaic first act, leaden and workmanlike, with an over-reliance on cliches of the genre. Lots of exposition, news reports about important characters conveniently playing on televisions, Marie staring at couple photos of her and Bourne to show us they're still in love, a scrapbook she leafs through that lets us know Bourne is struggling to regain his memories - there are news clippings of murder stories with annotations next to them like "Was this me?" and "Who am I?" and "Dear diary, I wish I could get my memory back, it's so frustrating how I still get partial flashbacks filled with smash cuts and Dutch angles and odd snatches of dialogue that will probably become important later on."

Bourne and Marie are hiding out in Goa, but shady folks have hired Karl Urban's Russian agent to sabotage a CIA mission helmed by new face of the agency Pamela Landy, a competent and focused professional played perfectly by Joan Allen - and Urban has planted a fingerprint framing Bourne for the sabotage, in which Landy's field agent and his contact are murdered.

Urban then heads to Goa and is spotted by Bourne rather conveniently, and Bourne's spidey-sense starts tingling and he rushes to get Marie and to escape in their Jeep. But Urban is hot on their tail, and cue a car chase that showcases new director Paul Greengrass's approach to action, something that becomes a calling card for the franchise.

It's a combination of shaky cam, quick cutting, and the partial framing of subject, as if the camera is perpetually struggling to keep up with the action. The style has become de rigueur for action movies these days, a cliched technique that is often used as a way for mediocre directors to mask uninteresting content behind chaotic and nausea-inducing filming. Look at something like the fight scenes in the Transformer movies for the worst examples of this.

Yet here the technique still feels fresh, and Greengrass is careful to show us just enough of the set up and each subsequent beat to ensure we get the gist - Urban is racing after Bourne and Marie, Bourne swaps seats with Marie, Marie cuts the Jeep across the fields, Urban is out of his car with his rifle racing to a vantage point - but within each beat the cuts come just too fast, the framing is just too close and claustrophobic, for us to relax within the shots. We get the information, but no time to appreciate or to process. It's breathless, we race onwards, always a brain jolt behind the action - and then Bourne and Marie have escaped, they're driving over the bridge to the mainland, the tension eases, the cuts slow, we get a chance to rest here in the intimacy of the car with the two of them-

-Quick cut back to Urban aiming his sniper rifle - Then cut back to the car-

-and Marie's head is snapped forwards and the Jeep swerves off the bridge and plummets into the river.

So, yes. Bourne's one emotional connection is torn from him, and he is thus motivated to re-enter the world of espionage and conspiracy and busy European cities, seeking retribution for, or at least understanding of, the death of the woman he loved. It's hackneyed, for sure, but it does the job - though only really because the first film worked so hard to build that tenderness between Bourne and Marie, which the sequel then trades in for a pre-packaged burst of pathos. Cheap, yet effective. We as the audience are there with Bourne as he burns Marie's belongings and prepares to go searching for answers.

And from here, through the second and third acts, the film doesn't put a foot wrong. There isn't the character development of the first film, which really was such a brilliant exploration of what it means to take responsibility for your life, to cast off the persona foisted upon you by an external world and to craft a new identity of your own choosing - but what there is instead is a fevered, unrelenting thrill-ride filled with loneliness and isolation and unease, a cat-and-mouse chase where Bourne holds all the skill and determination, yet the wider world embodied by Landy and Brian Cox's section chief Ward Abbott holds the power. Put Bourne in a room with three cops and those cops are going down. But then Bourne has to escape the building, hide from CCTV, dodge checkpoints, avoid monitored areas. Bourne is implacable, but every step he takes draws attention, and the net around him is shrinking.

The scope of the film is wider than the first, its story further reaching, but in the plotting of scenes there's the same care taken over realism, and the same satisfaction in watching Bourne struggle through set-piece after set-piece as the tension inexorably ramps and you wonder when you'll be able to catch your breath.

It's smart, it does have a heart (embodied in Bourne's refusal to take the lives of those who caused the death of Marie, and in the final taking of responsibility for the actions of his past), and it looks superb, replacing the muted low-fi aesthetic of the first film with a lagoonal world of greens and blues, all swanky yet lonesome hotel lobbies, stark interrogation rooms, and rainslicked motorways stretching into the night.

The machine of The Bourne Supremacy's action does take time to get rolling, but once it does it never lets up, and it rolls to such a well-structured conclusion that a third instalment was all but guaranteed.

Let's see what that one was like!

Day 111: Re-Bourne

Well, after watching the execrable Jason Bourne the other day, I couldn't resist going back to the beginning of the series to see whether 2002's The Bourne Identity actually had anything going for it, or whether it was just nostalgia clouding my judgement...

And Holy Damon, is this film a good 'un! It's a mainstream thriller but with indie sensibilities, invigorating and energetic, assured in its storytelling, grounded in character and emotion.

Looking fresh faced, still with the wiriness of youth, Matt Damon plays Bourne with a wounded vulnerability that juxtaposes nicely with the efficiency and brutality of his instinctive actions. The amnesia plot device is inspired, taking the idea of the macho, walking weapon that is the archetypal movie secret agent, and making that all the stuff that Bourne has no control over. He can't help knowing how to fight and how to scan a room in half a second flat for potential threats, that's just something that happens without him meaning it to - but who he actually is, who he chooses to be, from the beginning of the film when he's dredged up onto a fishing trawler with bullets in his back and no memory, is someone caring, sensitive, and easy for the audience to relate to.

By shearing the constructed amalgamation of Bourne's personality from his present moment existence, the film turns its protagonist's search for answers into an almost existential question - can we be defined as the sum total of everything we've previously done, or do we exist somewhere deeper than this? Is Bourne weighed down by the baggage of the person he's been, or was he effectively born (or, yes, sigh, Bourne) anew in that tempestuous ocean at the film's outset?

It's this question that provides the film with its emotional heart, as well as acting as a natty technique for ensuring the audience are firmly in Bourne's shoes, discovering the story at the same exact pace as Bourne himself.

In this regard Damon is the perfect fit, a supremely likeable everyman finding himself endowed with superhuman abilities, not unlike Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker in the Spider-Man film released the same year as this. Filled with turmoil and confusion, yet possessed of preternatural strength and control over his environment when danger dictates it, Damon pulls off both with aplomb.

Franka Potente as Marie, the drifting and rootless young adult caught up in Bourne's mess, is wonderful as well, strong willed and imbued with agency, yet fragile, overwhelmed, shocked by the violence, providing the necessary balance to Bourne's flattened affect in extreme situations.

It's not rocket science but it's insane how often films get this stuff wrong. You can turn the noise and the bombast up as high as you like, but it's not going to work unless you have relatable and believable main characters to whom the story's events can happen.

Here we care about Bourne and Marie, and so even small moments matter when their safety is put on the line. This is coupled with a solid script and excellent direction from Doug Liman, coming off the indie hits Swingers and Go. There's a feeling of realism that helps centre the tension, helps elevate scenes that might otherwise be formulaic.

So like as an example, early on Bourne has just been to a bank in Zurich and found a lockbox under his name with loads of passports, money in various currencies, and a pistol. Exiting the bank, keyed up from this discovery, wondering who the hell he is, he notices he has caught the attention somehow of local authorities. A traffic warden across the street is paying him attention. Bourne immediately moves off in the other direction. As he turns the corner two police officers step out in front of him. But they're only on patrol, and not after him, although they turn to stare as he walks away. A siren suddenly wails. But it's just an ambulance passing. Bourne paces on. Two more officers coming towards him, and, without breaking stride, direct and full of purpose, Bourne steps across the path of an approaching tram, which barely misses him, putting distance between him and the officers. Bourne glances back. The officers are following, receiving instructions on their radios. Shit. Bourne pushes forwards, but two cop cars come wailing down the road from the direction he's walking. Panic. Bourne looks about. Spots an American flag. A US embassy. Before thinking his US passport is in his hand, he raises it to the guard on the gate, and he's inside, just as the Swiss police behind are stopped by the same guard ("Hold it. Wait. You've got no jurisdiction here."). But out of the frying pan, into the fire...

It's a strong scene, taut and tense, and it works despite its simplicity because we're invested. You don't need rooftop motorbike chases and crashing through windows this early on; we empathise with the character and at this stage it's stressful enough imagining being alone in a foreign city not knowing who you are and suddenly finding the police following you.

Oof, it's so late at night, once again, I desperately need bed.

What else, quickly?

The film looks gorgeous, overcast skies and sombre streets, a film of muted colours, with a palpable connection to the physical world, to tin coffee cups and coils of rope, to peeling paint and rusted metal, to beat up old Minis and ageing shotguns, to neon hotels hidden away down winding Parisian backstreets. The cinematography is great, and the visual storytelling is so assured as well, showing much with the elegance of simple match cuts and the continuation of lines of motion.

Its final act is rushed, tying up the complex threads too easily, with a ludicrous and too-willfully-violent escape from Bourne to cap it off.

I love Clive Owen's character as a rival assassin on Bourne's trail throughout the film. Culminates in a set piece at a farmhouse full of tension that instead of providing the drawn-out fight we're expecting suddenly explodes into a clash that is short-lived and messy and utterly lacking in glamour, exactly as I suppose it would be.

The relationship between Bourne and Marie is tender, heartfelt, well observed. Too often the quieter moments in Hollywood films feel like generic filler, like placeholder scenes that weren't important enough to be replaced, whereas here they're approached with the same care and attention that is brought to every scene, and they are successful because of it. The intimacy of the love scene, all glances and gentle initiating contact, with the camera pulling away as the two finally embrace, retreating out of the room, then out of the hotel, down the street, leaving it all behind as the neon flashes and the night hums in silence and we fade to black - man, it's a really nice moment, that.

And so that's Bourne Identity. A Hollywood blockbuster that's smart and believable and cool as all hell, liberal leaning in its politics, focused on character rather than bombast, asking subtle questions about the nature of personality, yet taut and thrilling all the same.

I wonder what the second one is like...

Day 109: Flogging a dead horse until it's Bourne again

Well I'm home after a close-open and I've done nothing this evening even moderately worthy of blogging about save watching the latest Bourne film, snappily titled Jason Bourne - because, you know, nothing says your franchise has run out of steam like releasing an ostensibly back-to-basics sequel announcing its intention to return to form via a stark, unadorned title - see: Fast and Furious, Rocky Balboa, The Predator, etc. etc. - and of course the film won't truly be a return to form, it'll be a dumb sequel like all the others, but naming it in such a way allows you to flog one more box-office return from the dead horse before you bury it for good. Or you reboot the franchise and start again. Or write a prequel explaining how the alien ship that no one cares about got onto the planet that no one remembers. Or you create an expanded universe tying your franchise to many other franchises. And Hollywood marches on.

Well, anyway, want to know what I thought of Jason Bourne?

I thought it was utter crap. Formulaic, paint-by-numbers dross. The first two Bournes were frenetic, no-nonsense European thrillers, slick and gritty and hip, hearty antidotes to the adolescent silliness of James Bond. Spy films not for 13-year-olds, but for... well, 16-year-olds. The thinking teen's spy film.

But Jason Bourne takes what could generously be described as the series' common elements and turns them into tired tropes, each existing with no internal logic or greater meaning beyond ticking off the hallowed checklist of Things All Bourne Films Must Contain.

So you've got your vulnerable potential sidekick who's killed off early on (spoilers), robbing Bourne of anyone with whom he could have formed an emotional connection. You've got your FBI or CIA or whatever director embroiled in nefarious schemes protecting a top-secret agency initiative.

Is there an assassin with preternatural abilities comparable to Bourne's own, referred to by the agency only as "the asset", brought it when bungling agents fail to get the job done, you ask? You bloody bet your sexy bum there is.

And how about a structure whereby Bourne is always a step ahead of the agency in every situation, except when the asset comes into play, which forces Bourne onto the back foot, until just as it looks like the agency has Bourne cornered it turns out his plan was an extra step ahead of them all along? Wow, you're good at this!

And if you guessed there's a female analyst character who realises Bourne isn't a baby-eater and comes over to his side when he needs her the most, and an interminable punch-up between Bourne and the asset, with both utilising makeshift weapons scavenged from the environment, and flashback scenes where shadowy memories from Bourne's past come back to haunt him, and a car chase where all the windows of the cars smash and the bonnets accordion and the bodywork crumples - if you've guessed all that then gold medals and meringues all round, because you sir or madam are right on the money.

That car chase: the asset, after being thwarted by Bourne, sneaks out of an expo centre while the cops are looking for him and into the fleeing crowds. Then this highly trained secret operative decides his best chance of escape is to knife a soldier in the back and steal a SWAT van, and he careens off into downtown Las Vegas with cop cars and helicopters and searchlights after him, as Bourne steals a Dodge Charger or something I think they said (I don't know cars) which was waiting with its keys in the ignition and obviously wasn't product placement paid for by Dodge (or whomever), and there the SWAT van is smashing into traffic and ramming cruisers, there's Bourne ragging it after him - and the scene ends up reminiscent of nothing so much as the inevitable conclusion to every play session of Grand Theft Auto ever, after you've got bored of the story missions and structure and everything and you decide to just steal the biggest vehicle you can find and smash through waves of police, shooting your Uzi out of the window, trying to hold out as long as you can before you're taken down in a blaze of glory, which takedown you don't end up minding so much because tea is almost ready and you're getting a headache and all this nonsense is a bit immature in honesty anyway.

That's Jason Bourne all over. An energetic shaky-cam dash through a plot that at heart is as nonsensical as any videogame, sticking to not just genre but franchise conventions with religious rigidity, falling eventually apart into noise and idiocy, as if everyone involved has realised their tea is ready and they're too old to still be doing this.

That chase scene culminates in Bourne and the asset wailing on each other in the moody shadows of a storm drain, back and forth, back and forth, two old men once possessed of killer instincts, now lacking the energy to finish the other off.

There's a metaphor for the entire series there somewhere, but it's too late at night for me to be able to quite find it, so all I'll say is that this film is so dumb that it literally has a character yell out a version of the "zoom and enhance" trope as if it wasn't the lamest plot device in all of screenwriting.

What a load of pish.