I remember
back in the day when I first saw The Bourne Identity, and it was one of the
most suspenseful and thrilling films I had ever seen. For each subsequent
Bourne film, I had the same feeling of pure adrenaline; this film however,
lacks the feeling the original trilogy gave me. The fourth instalment in Bourne
franchise is written and directed by Tony Gilroy (who also wrote the first
three films) and gets rid of Jason Bourne altogether… sort of.
The film
follow Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner), who is an agent in a similar program to the
one Jason Bourne was in. As these government programs are slowly endangered of
getting exposed, they decide to shut down the program and erase all evidence of
the programs, which involves wiping out all agents. Aaron Cross, however,
managed to dodge their first attempt to kill him and is now on the run from the
government. The premise is intriguing,
but sadly the script lacks questions to drive the film. The are occasional
questions that pop up during the film, however most of these are minor and
often answered too quickly and not very cleverly. This leaves us with only one question, whether he lives or dies, driving the film´s
suspense. A simple plot like this can work well if done right, however when a
film is so much dialogue and so little action, there should be much more going
on in the story. While Jason Bourne was a character full of mystery and depth,
Aaron Cross is very bland, one-dimensional and just not very interesting. That
being said, Renner gives an undeniably good performance, but it is still hard
to root for this guy because there just aren’t that many reasons for us to care
for him. The only reason we really cheer for him is because the people who are
trying to get him killed are unquestionably some pretty bad people. The main
antagonist of the film is Eric Byer (Edward Norton) who is set up as a good
villain, however as the film moves along he just kind of disappears and seems
to be forgotten by the end of the film and overall he was just underused. As for
Jason Bourne being here, well he doesn’t physically appear, but he is mentioned
quite a lot, which actually bothered me a lot as I felt it didn’t matter for
the film I was watching, the scenes didn’t add anything to the story. It kind
of felt like they wanted to remind us that this is in the Jason Bourne
universe, but it just felt like they were trying to tell a story about Jason
Bourne without Jason Bourne.
The films
strongpoint is its actions scenes, which are all very well done and for the
most part they hold up to the action scenes in the original trilogy in terms of
execution. The film doesn´t use as much shaky cam as the previous film, however thats a good think as its easier to follow the action scenes here. One thing that somewhat at times removed some suspense from the
action scenes, is that Aaron Cross seemed pretty much indestructible, he was a
complete badass, but he just didn’t seem to have any weak spots or
vulnerability. The cinematography was very good for the most part with some
beautiful scenic shot, however there were some occasional odd camerawork during
dialogue scenes that, to me, were somewhat distracting, however this only
happened a couple of times. The film had sine very choppy editing in th4 first
ten minutes or so, however it got better after that. The film actually does
have some balls though, because there is one scene here, which was maybe the
best of the film that takes place in a lab (not going to spoil anything more
then that), which I think is a bold scene for a film like this and was very
unexpectedly unsettling.
Overall
this film is nowhere close to the original trilogy and has one too many flaws
to make it a great movie, however it still is very enjoyable if you are looking for
a fun action-thriller to watch with your friends, just don’t expect the
complexity found within the previous instalments.
2.5/5
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