It's been nine years since we last saw Matt Damon as everyone's favorite amnesiac government assassin. In that time, Bourne has kept his head down, living off the grid and making ends meet as a bare-knuckle street brawler. (You gotta eat, right?) It isn't until his old Treadstone ally Nicky Parsons (Julia Styles) tracks him down claiming to have new information on his past that Bourne becomes the hunted once again.
It seems in addition to possessing revealing details on Bourne's father, Parsons has uncovered files on a shadowy new CIA surveillance program called Ironwill. Well of course the agency can't have knowledge like that in the hands of its most-wanted rogue operative and soon they dispatch a team, led by cyber-terrorism chief Heather Lee (a steely Alicia Vikander), to neutralize the threat.
What ensues is basically the same been-there-done-that formula as the three previous films. Sure, the action is great, breathless and clever, but to what end? There are really no new disclosures, nothing to evolve the characters or storylines.
Tommy Lee Jones steps in as the resident top-ranking government baddie, but he's really just another incarnation of the ones played by Chris Cooper, Brian Cox and David Stathairn. Apparently the agency gets these guys off an assembly line.
Both Damon and Greengrass have always resisted reviving the character unless the story was something special. This was the best they could come up with? Grade: B -
