Jason Bourne

When we see Matt Damon as Jason Bourne for the first time in the newest installment of the superspy franchise, he looks weary. His hair has begun to gray and there’s a heaviness to his face that wasn’t there when we saw him last in 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum. It’s been almost a decade since we last visited the tortured superspy as he continued his fight to figure out who he really is and to reclaim his humanity. And frankly, he looks a little tired. One could argue that the series should have ended in 2007 and that the reason Bourne looks old is because he is.

Julia Styles, who plays Bourne’s former handler Nikki is the only other returning cast member from the previous films. She is now closer to being 40 than to being the 21 year old she was in The Bourne Identity. Like Matt Damon, Styles looks fatigued. In fact, in her hair and makeup, she actually looks very much like Joan Allen’s character, deputy CIA director Pamela Landy, from the second and third films. As easy as it is to make jokes about aging actors trying to milk action roles meant for younger people, I can’t help but feel that Stiles’ resemblance to the much older Allen as well as Damon’s age is a purposeful choice made by the filmmakers.

Their age and weariness are meant to show what a lifetime of spying and killing and continually crossing both political and personal boundaries in the name of the greater good can do. Bourne is worn down by his guilt over his past. Nikki has seen things and had to make choices that have aged her beyond her years. Sometimes actors aging over the course of a long franchise doesn’t work out very well, but in this case, embracing it is a nice touch.

Overall, I was slightly disappointed in Jason Bourne. Not because it didn’t deliver what I’ve come expect from the films but because it delivered exactly that. It hits all the familiar beats, right down to the whip-fast shots of Bourne repeatedly hammering the clutch and shifting gears during a harrowing car chase. There’s the craggy CIA boss played by an older character actor with so much gravitas that he doesn’t actually have to act. In the past it was Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, David Strathairn, and Scott Glenn. This time around, it’s the craggiest of the craggy, Tommy Lee Jones. It has the winsome, vaguely defined love interest that meets and ugly, abrupt fate. It has a motorcycle chase up and down winding European stairways, and an anxiety inducing car chase, this time through the streets of Las Vegas, that uses the cars themselves as bludgeoning weapons.

It has all the elements that made the first three Matt Damon Bourne movies among the best, most visceral, least sentimental action films of the last two decades. The problem, if you want to call it that, is that it doesn’t really bring much that’s new. I’m all in favor of familiarity, even retelling a story altogether, as long as there’s something new revealed in the revision.

The only new element is Alicia Vikander’s Heather Lee, a Lady Macbeth CIA Cyber Ops chief. Her sly, slithery, side-eye-filled performance actually had me wondering what she was really up for the whole film. And that’s great because there isn’t a lot of mystery about who is going to come out on top in the battle between Bourne and the CIA or its latest menacing European assassin asset in the form of Vincent Cassell. But it’s precious little that’s new and that’s too bad.

I shouldn’t complain. Jason Bourne’s quality is still head-and-shoulders above most of the other films released this summer. There may not be a lot that’s new, but even the old stuff is still really good.