Watching this new Bourne installment and “Jack Reacher” within 24 hours was maybe not such a good idea. The boundaries get blurry, the heroes get slightly indistinguishable, the action set pieces get even more arbitrary then they would be one by one. But let’s try: apart from everything that’s true for “Jack Reacher” (perfectly fine if you go in without expectations of a breakthrough event movie, ideally hot outside, air conditioned inside, maybe popcorn available if your diet plan allows etc.) Jeremy Renner looks the part of not indestructible, but still convincingly hyper-skilled action hero (no wonder, he took green AND blue pills, extraordinary mind-body coordination, mind you! They made that up, not me…): He climbs across snowy mountains , fights off packs of wolves single-handed, performs self-surgery and even manages to get a girl involved (in the interest of the audience’s girlfriends, I guess) in a setting that could have been perfectly fine without any female presence.
Bond-style change of exotic scenery (Alaska and Philippines, most prominently) allow for a change of survival style and scenery, abundance of global surveillance cameras available to the US department trying to track him down to finish cleaning up their secret programme nr. 3 (nr. 1 and 2 were done away with in previous films, I am sure they have a couple more up their sleeves to shut down and set in motion global carnage among their agents, if there are any left), convenient speed of recovery from what was promised to be an almost lethal viral experiment. Even motorbike chase sequences through Manila alleyways are there, for those who care for that kind of worn-out spectacle.
Too late, the authors realise they should establish a proper opponent, and quicker than you can say “Next Generation Bourne Clone”, there he is, conveniently located in Bangkok so he can be flown in on short notice. Only that really was a bit late, so he only has some 10 minutes to stalk our heroes Terminator-like, super-double-blue-pill powered that he is (“minus the emotional aspects”). Meaning I did not care for that guy, even though he looked kind of cute. Maybe they can clone him for the next film: “Bourne-Bond versus Asian Predator” offers itself as a title. I assume they need a new hero anyway, I can’t imagine Renner wants to be stuck with that kind of franchise for too long. While it certainly generously paid for some gas and water bills for himself and director Tony Gilroy (of “Michael Clayton” fame), I suspect they are aware that there are better things to do for people with talent.
thomas4cinema 