https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4gJsKZvqE4
Halfway through this pyrotechnic nightmare, as I struggled to find the will to see it through to the end, it dawned on me; how dull people’s lives must be for ‘franchise’ flicks such as this to be so endlessly successful. Here we go… lots of bang for your buck from the opening, with Bourne (Matt Damon) being chased through Athens by agents who want to eradicate him because his aim is to release online a file that will expose the nefarious activities of the CIA and its megalomaniacal chief (Tommy Lee Jones). As an action sequence, the prolonged pursuit, with a frenetic edit that almost makes you think that Damon’s stunt man could be in danger, is filmmaking of the highest order, but only in the same way that two hours of root canal work is similarly skilled dentistry – all you want is for it to end. Unfortunately, it’s like that for the next hour-and-a-half. Damon speaks little more than a dozen words at a time while the fine French actor Vincent Cassel says even fewer as he roams around shooting people willy nilly as a whirlwind of smash-ups lurches from Athens to Berlin to London to ghastly Las Vegas. Bourne looks harried but never fazed and, despite having no visible means of support, has no trouble in lobbing at whatever city is nominated as a rendezvous point. Minimal script time is allotted for him to be troubled by the reason for his father’s death and writer/director Paul Greengrass indulges in some glib commentary on the more sinister repercussions of the cyberspace revolution, but nothing can take precedence over the chasings, with the Girl as tasty aside (the Girl is an essential component in any numbskull blokey caper). First it was Julia Stiles, the chick who flew from Reykjavik to set Bourne on his course, then it was Alicia Vikander, the gorgeous CIA tech-head who has access to surveillance cameras at the push of a button. Horribleness is at large in our world. Crap movies such as this contribute nothing to its cessation.
