Last Friday, my family and I went to the movie theater to watch Jason Bourne, the 5th movie in the Jason Bourne saga. While I have not watched the original Bourne trilogy fully, I have a general understanding of the plot due to watching parts of the movies while my dad, a diehard fan of Robert Ludlum’s Bourne book series, would re-watch them. (I’m also part of the minority group that actually enjoyed Jeremy Renner’s The Bourne Legacy.) Regardless, there are some things I wanted to talk about after seeing the movie on Friday. Some awesome things and some relatively terrible and/or ludicrous things.
WARNING: SPOILERS LIE AHEAD. IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS, DON’T READ UNTIL AFTER HAVING WATCHED THE MOVIE. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) of the previous Bourne movies is working with known cyber-creep Christian Dessault to hack the CIA and release the secret information about their various programs like Treadstone and Blackbriar (secret agent programs) to the public. While hacking the CIA, she finds files on Jason Bourne (Matt Damon), real name David Webb, and his father, and decides to tell Bourne about it. She meets Bourne in Greece, but unfortunately, her hacking was noticed by the CIA CyberOps Head Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander), and they send an assassin after Bourne and Parsons and kill Parsons. Bourne follows the Blue’s Clues that he finds and goes to different locations London, Berlin, etc. to finally figure out the truth that the man who killed Parsons is the same man who killed his father (in an attack attributed to a terrorist group). He also finds out that his father actually created the Treadstone program that he was recruited into, but was killed by the government assassin when he did not want the CIA to pull his son into the program. In a parallel story arc, Aaron Kalloor (Riz Ahmed), CEO of a Facebook/Google/something-not-stated tech/social media company called Deep Dream, decides to back away from working with the CIA. The CIA had previously funded Deep Dream when it was a start up, and while Kalloor’s company had paid them back the money (many a time), the CIA wants to use the launch of the company’s new platform to surveil the entire world. Kalloor, who believes firmly in the right to internet privacy that he has promised his consumers, refuses to continue helping the CIA. So, the CIA serves the company a lawsuit on the grounds of the Sherman Act, and when that doesn’t change Kalloor’s mind, they decide to take him out and make it look like a terrorist attack. Bourne, who Lee helps get to Las Vegas, where the climactic TechCon scene occurs, prevents the assassination from happening, kills the Asset (badass Vincent Cassel), and then disappears.
The Good:
1. Julia Stiles
Julia Stiles is in the movie. Hooray! Julia Stiles is back as Nicky Parsons in Jason Bourne. In previous movies, Parsons was a CIA operative who ended up helping Bourne escape from the CIA Treadstone program and release its information across the Internet. But while I do love Julia Stiles, she is killed off very quickly in the story. And to that I say, boo! While I understand that it is easier to add a previously established character rather than to create a backstory for a brand new one, there was no real point to Parsons’ death. Yet, I also understand why she was killed. This movie is more about Jason Bourne’s conflict between his actions and himself. Yes, the story involves the CIA as an antagonist, but they seem almost unimportant compared to Bourne’s attempts at trying to figure out who he used to be.
2. The Technology
One really cool thing about this movie is that technology is at the forefront. The super secret shady government program Iron Hand is being launched under the guise of a massive social media-ish platform. And a main character in the story is CIA CyberOps Head Heather Lee, who traces Bourne’s location to different places, stops a CIA breach that no one else at the agency can even understand, and plants malware into files so that she can use it to find someone. It is also really exciting that the movie is giving Silicon Valley, with all of its diversity, the importance in its fictional American society that it deserves. The main action sequence occurs at a TechCon!
The Bad and/or Very Unrealistic:
1. Unrealistic expectations of Technology
In Jason Bourne, the expectation for computer scientists was split into two areas. Either they were tech wizards and could do things that were practically magical with their CS powers or they were evil cybercriminals who could also perform magic through programming. Some interesting (read: most likely impossible) things that occurred. Hacktivists in the cyberbunker where Parsons is hacking the CIA talk about using “SQL to corrupt their databases.” My mom and dad cracked up laughing listening to that line. According to my parents, SQL is a data retrieval program and about the only way they could use it to corrupt a database would be to insert garbage data into the database. The issue with corrupting the database that way, however, is that every entry using SQL is logged, so the hackers would definitely not get away with that. Another magical scene occurs when CyberOps Head Heather Lee uses a cell phone to hack into a computer that is not connected to Wi-Fi or the cell phone in any way and most likely highly encrypted. And she does this in the span of 10-15 minutes!
2. The climax scene
There’s not really a lot to say about the climax scene other than that it was very unsatisfying. There is no dramatic music, no dialogue between the two men, Bourne and the Asset, who are fighting. It is 15 minutes of grunting, sounds of flesh being punched, and then choking noises as Jason Bourne wins. There is no resolution. Perhaps because the movie seemed to have two climaxes. One where Bourne kills the Asset, the man who killed his father, and the second where Bourne confronts CIA Director Dewey (the awesome Tommy Lee Jones), the man responsible for Bourne’s manipulation into the program. Yet, in the second climax, Bourne received no resolution either, because he did not kill Dewey. Lee ends up killing Dewey after realizing that he sabotaged her attempt at bringing Bourne in peacefully and helping Bourne get to Las Vegas. And then Lee becomes the Director of the CIA and the chase seems to begin all over again.
The Conclusion:
Jason Bourne was a decent movie, but it wasn’t anything great enough to see in theaters. The first thing I thought coming out of the movie was that Captain America: The Winter Soldier did the personal freedom vs. invasion of privacy by possibly evil government plot much better. Save yourself $14 and just re-watch TWS. The issue with the movie was that the entire story was too vague. While moviegoers knew what was happening, we didn’t get enough detail. What was Iron Hand? What exactly did the Deep Dream company do? Did Jason Bourne have PTSD? What had he been doing in the NINE YEARS since the last movie? He couldn’t have been going to random countries and cage fighting the entire time. Movies thrive because of the details. Those details make the story real to the audiences, and it feels like Jason Bourne just didn’t have enough.
