The Jason Bourne series is one of those things that had a mostly bad influence on lots of other movies and mostly was a good example of how a series of films could suffer from diminishing returns as it kept going. But I will always have a deep fondness for this series overall and for a few of the films in particular. It was one of the best showcases for Matt Damon as a star.
5. The Bourne Legacy [2012]
Okay, there are two big takeaways from this movie. One, it was absolutely hilarious that Hollywood thought Jeremy Renner had the makings of being a big blockbuster star. He is actually a pretty fine character actor, but a star, he has never been nor will he ever be.
Secondly, this movie is insane. Like, what were they thinking? How did they screw up the fundamentals of this movie so bad? How was it not just a fun assassin betrayed movie? What was this shit about pills? How did the setup take so long to execute? What were they thinking??? Anyone, this one is real bad and only has one redeeming quality (Oscar Isaac in that sweater).
4. Jason Bourne [2016]
Okay, so, yes, this is the weakest of the Matt Damon films for all the obvious reasons – the most significant of which is that the films getting increasingly obsessed with exploring the LORE of the series instead of focusing on the action. That being said, it is a perfectly solid and worthy entry.
I love the idea of an older Bourne with nothing to live for and looking for some kind of purpose. I love the idea of Alicia Vikander and Riz Ahmed proving that purely fresh faces is not the same thing as reforming or tearing down corrupt institutions. I am even starting to come around to the idea that it is okay that David Webb got manipulated into joining Treadstone in the first place (it works thematically if not dramatically).
Bu ultimately, this movie never fully justifies its existence and has a late, unforgivable vibe killer. They had cleared the board so much of relevant threads for Jason at the end of Ultimatum, and Legacy proved how little there was to mine from non-Matt Damon aspects of the world. So, they seemingly recognize that and half-heartedly reboot the world with an older Matt Damon while still giving him a motivation we would understand from the original films. And it just never fully works (even if I still mostly enjoy it because I am a sucker).
3. The Bourne Ultimatum [2007]
The first two Jason Bourne movies are kind of just this ideal 1-2 partner films. Then we get a series of diminishing returns (to varying degrees) with all future installments.
Starting here, the films become too obsessed with their own lore. What made Jason Bourne sincerely fun as a character was that very little was known about him. This film goes all in on the idea that we want to know as much as possible about who Jason Bourne was and that is just insane.
It was quite beautiful and sad that this man who was representative of all the promise of this country had been completely twisted into doing the country’s evil. In this film though, they begin to betray that idea and start to lean into this idea that Jason was not even a corrupted innocent but someone who was forced into this evil path.
The film is still a fun ride but that insecurity that we would like Bourne less if he was not more of an innocent is a sincere buzzkill. His redemption was powerful because he was making different choices, not that he was liberated via freak accident.
2. The Bourne Identity [2002]
Going back and re-watching The Bourne Identity is just ton of fun. The movie gets so many things right.
It crafts the perfect starring role for Matt Damon and his natural North/South persona. He is the everyman version of Tom Cruise, and it works so well here.
It establishes immediately that this shadow government spy agency that is the United States international intelligence community is inherently evil and not something to celebrate.
It pushes combat and action for regular human characters forward in Hollywood and helps to popularize a more brutal form of movie fighting.
And for the fans of the series in general, it was just so damn refreshing to watch a Jason Bourne movie that was not so obsessed with its own lore. With each passing movie, the Jason Bourne filmmakers obsessively peeled back more layers that essentially just ruined the mystique of the world and its characters. Sometimes it’s better to not know every little detail and keep things a mystery.
1. The Bourne Supremacy [2004]
It is really shame that there ended up being so many pale imitations of what Paul Greengrass did with Jason Bourne here. Because this movie still kicks ass (despite its ideas being watered down by lesser copies).
While one could understandably focus on the way the film is shot and edited, the more interesting aspect of what was done with this film was the insertion of the Joan Allen character. She plays the yet to be corrupted and cynicism-free CIA admin who does not understand the bigger games at play.
She is the ideal “villain” for Matt Damon because she conveys the same north/south personality with ease and becomes a great change of pace given the villains of the last film. She is hunting down Jason Bourne because it genuinely seems like the right thing to do based on the (limited) information at her disposal.
Allen also fits in with the bigger ideas of the series. Joan Allen does not represent a better vision of the future for the CIA. Her presence instead emphasizes how she is much like Jason Bourne in that she is naively buying into the idea that they are doing good in the world. While Bourne needed to develop amnesia to learn something was wrong, Allen simply just needs to get deeper into the beast to realize something was fundamentally wrong.
This is one of the best action films of the century.
The Reel World 