The deadly amnesiac Jason Bourne first hit screens in 2002, less than a year after 9/11. The Bourne Identity had an edge to it, a suggestion of what espionage thrillers might become in the terror years. But there was no reason to think we'd still be talking about Bourne 14 years later.
Then a few things happened. Director Paul Greengrass took over the franchise for the second and third films of the series, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, and he brought his keen sense of kinetic paranoia. The stories, revolving around a tormented CIA agent (Matt Damon) trying to piece together his past, got progressively darker with the times. The level of artistry rose exponentially; it's easy to forget that 2007's Bourne Ultimatum won three Oscars, for editing, sound editing and sound mixing.
Greengrass stepped away from 2012's underrated Bourne Legacy, which featured a new character played by Jeremy Renner, and Damon followed his lead. But they're both back for Jason Bourne, opening Friday.
Fans of the franchise will recognize familiar characters and themes. The CIA takes its orders from a corrupt old man (in this case Tommy Lee Jones) who has no qualms about ordering the assassinations of Americans. The surveillance state is forever expanding; now it includes a morally conflicted Silicon Valley tech mogul (Riz Ahmed). The action, from hand-to-hand combat to epic chase sequences, is lean but spectacular. (For a less enthusiastic endorsement, watch me hash out the new movie with my Reel Genius partner Robert Wilonsky).
I fully embraced the Bourne franchise a few minutes into the first time I saw The Bourne Ultimatum. I had liked the first two movies well enough, but they didn't much excite me. The Waterloo Station sequence in Ultimatum excited me.
Damon's Bourne leads a doomed English journalist (Paddy Considine) through a series of evasive maneuvers as a team of CIA agents tries to take both of them out. A slimy agent played by David Strathairn plots each step of the attack from an icy office in New York. The editing couldn't be more precise, and the implications are chilling: an American government agency pivoting on a dime to assassinate a reporter. It's still my favorite dramatic portrayal of our surveillance age's razor edge.
You probably don't know who he is, but the return of Christopher Rouse is just as important to Jason Bourne as the return of Damon. Rouse is Greengrass' editor and chief creative collaborator, the guy who makes those action scenes move like caffeinated documentary footage. He gets his first screenplay credit on Jason Bourne, which seem odd until you realize that Rouse has long been writing with his editing, as sure as you write with a pen.
The Bourne movies always feel very now. They reflect the concerns of an increasingly frantic world, and they have little room for James Bond-like quips and romance. But they still manage to entertain relentlessly. Greengrass cooks with a dash of the paranoia that defined so many American movies of the '70s. The Bourne franchise, however, is the perfect dish for its own scary era.
