Damon & Greengrass Are Back, But The BOURNE Formula Has Grown Stale

Now playing at a multiplex near you:

JASON BOURNE

(Dir. Paul Greengrass, 2016)

Since the previous BOURNE entry, THE BOURNE LEGACY, was such a bust, it was initially good news to hear that Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass were returning to the series.

One would figure that they must have a killer story that would want to make them come back for more, right?

Surely director Greengrass, co-scripting with the film’s editor Christopher Rouse, who won the Best Editing Oscar for THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM, came up with some new-fangled premise that would make us forget the misguided attempt to replace Damon with Jeremy Renner and get the franchise back on track, right?

Sadly, but no, for JASON BOURNE is a by-the-numbers, standard sequel bore that only succeeds in showing that Damon has gotten back in shape, and has completely shed the “dad bod” image that tabloids got a lot of mileage out of a few years back.

We get this upfront as we re-meet Jason Bourne as he engages in some shirtless street fighting for cash in rural Greece. Meanwhile, Bourne’s analyst contact Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles reprising her role from the original trilogy), in hiding in Reykjavik, Iceland, hacks into the CIA’s black ops file and finds info about evildoing afoot in the relaunching of the Treadstone program that birthed Bourne, and how his father was mixed up in all of it.

Nicky’s hacking is detected by the CIA’s Cyber Ops division head Heather Lee, played by Alicia Vikander (EX MACHINA, THE DANISH GIRL), and Tommy Lee Jones as CIA Director Robert Dewey – both new characters to the series.

So the chase is on –Nicky travels to Greece to meet with Bourne which results in a chase through Syntagma Square in Athens involving Bourne and Nicky motorcycling through the fiery riot of political protesters as Vincent Cassel as a sniper only indentified as “The Asset” targets them from a rooftop above.

Mixed up in all this spy stuff is a Mark Zuckerberg-esque social media mogul named Aaron Kalloor (Riz Ahmed) who’s doing shady surveillance business with the CIA through his Facebook-like platform, Deep Dream. This subplot doesn't make much of a timely statement or have much impact, but Ahmed is good in it.

Between Bourne bouncing from Greece to London to the big climax in Las Vegas, he has flashbacks to his father Richard Webb’s (Gregg Henry) assassination, each time learning a little bit more until he figures out who killed him.

The film is well paced, but the plot just isn’t very interesting. All the kinetic energy that is the series’ trademark is there, but it’s in service of a routine series of action set pieces. Cassel makes for a boring antagonist, Vikander’s American accent doesn’t wear well on her, Stiles gets shafted early on, and Damon, now graying at the temples, is again such a serious slab of intensity that not once does he smile.

Only Jones appears to be having any fun with this material – I think he owns the movie’s only humorous moment – but not enough for the movie to be much fun.

All the things that were so cool about the BOURNE movies - the shaky-cam, quick-cutting drive, the tech savviness - have been done to death in so many high-octane thrillers in the fourteen years since THE BOURNE IDENTITY that it feels old hat here. They really should’ve called it THE BOURNE REDUNDANCY like so many folks, including Damon, have joked.

JASON BOURNE is already a huge hit (it’s currently #1 at the box office), so there will be likely more BOURNE on the horizon. Here’s hoping that next time, Damon and Greengrass and Co. will be more inspired.

While the first three films are essential genre exercises, this and THE BOURNE LEGACY come off like artificial extensions of the BOURNE brand. The formula has grown stale, but it maybe die-hard fans will still find it consumable. Since I’m not that big of a fan, I was just bored for the most part by this round of BOURNE.

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Guy Ritchie’s THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.: A Stiff Yet Glib Exercise

Opening today at a multiplex near you:

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. (Dir. Guy Ritchie, 2015)

Guy Ritchie’s update of the ‘60s spy television series The Man From U.N.C.L.E. may be his best looking, and most stylish film, but sadly it may be his least interesting.

Now, I may be experiencing a form of formula fatigue after a summer of being bombarded by a bunch of big ass blockbuster wannabes, but this cold war action thriller struck me as so rote, and by-the-numbers that I almost nodded off a few times.

The duo of Henry Cavill (MAN OF STEEL) and Armie Hammer (LONE RANGER), as art thief/CIA Napoleon Solo and KGB agent Illya Kuryaki, the iconic roles previously played by Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, goes through the predictable motions: you know, at first they hate each other, then they build a grudging respect, etc.

The plot, which has them reluctantly paired together to stop an evil organization from building a nuclear bomb that could cause the “end of the world, that kind of thing” as one of the not so sharp lines in the screenplay by Ritchie and frequent collaborator Lionel Wigram puts it, is uninspired, tired stuff. It says a lot that Paul Feig’s Melissa McCarthy vehicle SPY from earlier this summer had a more involving narrative.

Alicia Vikander, an actress who is having a breakthrough year via major roles in EX MACHINA, TESTAMENT OF YOUTH, and this, plays Gaby Teller, the daughter of a German scientist who was kidnapped by the bad guys. Gaby joins Napoleon and Illya on their mission, travelling with them to Rome where we find out who the film’s villain is: the glamorous blonde bombshell arms dealer Victoria Vinciguerra (Elizabeth Debicki).

Some of the set-pieces pop – particularly a high speed chase involving a dune buggy, a jeep, and a motorcycle that slickly incorporates split screens – but most are workmanlike and without much momentum. It’s a shame that this project, that was in development hell since the early ‘90s, turned out to be such an unremarkable piece of product. And it’s one that’s stiff yet glib at the same time.

It’s also a bit amusing, more amusing than the actual material here, that almost everybody is playing another nationality. Cavill is British playing an American. Hammer is American playing a Russian. Vikander is British playing a German. Debicki is Australian playing an Italian. The British Jarred Harris, who plays Cavill’s CIA boss, affects an American accent that sounds like he’s imitating Ed Asner. When Hugh Grant popped up as the head of U.N.C.L.E. (which, by the way, stands for United Network Command for Law and Enforcement), I was just happy that he was speaking with his real voice.

Ritchie’s reboot, re-imaging, re-whatever THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. isn’t without its charms – they are just in small supply. Cavill’s Solo exudes charisma, and gives us a little taste of what his Clark Kent could be like, but he’s crudely offset by the humorlessness of Hammer’s take on Illya. Vikander adds a nice splash of color to the proceedings, but mainly because of her mod dresses. Still, a bit where she dances drunk in a hotel room behind Hammer’s back is adorable.

So that’s another entry in this year’s summer cinema sweepstakes – a fairly forgettable re-branding of an old TV show. Fall can’t come soon enough.

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The Chillingly Brilliant EX MACHINA Out This Week on Blu Ray/DVD

EX MACHINA

(Dir. Alex Garland, 2015)

It’s time to take a break from all the summer sequels and highly hyped blockbuster wannabes clogging up the multiplexes, and take note that one of the best films of the year, Alex Garland’s sleek, dark sci-fi thriller EX MACHINA drops this week on Blu ray and DVD. Despite critical acclaim, it quietly came and went in theaters early this year, but I bet it’ll build its deserved audience quickly on home video.

Domhnall Gleeson (HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PARTS I & II, ABOUT TIME, FRANK) plays Caleb Smith, a programmer at the Google-esque internet search engine giant Bluebook, who wins first prize in a companywide lottery. This entitles Caleb to a week’s stay at the home of the company’s reclusive CEO, located on his vast mountain estate (location never specified, but filmed in Norway).

In another solidly intense performance, Oscar Isaac (head shaved, but sporting a bushy beard) portrays the CEO, Nathan Bateman, who tells Caleb in their first meeting that his impressive compound of glass, stone, and shiny surfaces isn’t a house, it’s a research facility. After he gets him to sign a non disclosure form, Nathan reveals to Caleb that he’s built an android with Artificial Intelligence and that he wants Caleb to be the human component in the Turing Test - “when a human interacts with a computer, and if the human doesn’t know they’re interacting with a computer – the test is passed.”

Caleb is introduced to the AI, Ava (Alicia Vikander), who via CGI has parts that are transparent, and their sessions begin. Caleb speaks to Ava through a glass wall of an observation room, and, of course, develops an attraction to her. Nathan monitors their conversations on surveillance cameras, but during a power outage (something that happens often, Nathan explains) Ava warns Caleb that “Nathan is not your friend.”

There are other red flags that Nathan, who’s constantly boozing it up, is a modernized version of the classic mad scientist character –he’s hacked into the cell phones of billions, the contest was a smokescreen for this experiment, there is footage of other AI models desperately (and destructively) trying to escape , and he may have programmed Ava to flirt with Caleb.

There is only one other cast member - Kyoko, a Japanese housemaid (Sonoya Mizuno) who speaks no English but definitely has some dance moves as we see when a yet again drunken Nathan tries to get a party going with she and Caleb.

The directorial debut of screenwriter Alex Garland (28 DAYS LATER, NEVER LET ME GO, and DREDD) EX MACHINA is sharply constructed – there’s not a misplaced line, shot, or story beat and Geoff Barrow and Glenn Salisbury’s eerie electronic score effectively connects it all together.

Gleeson’s role is similar to his part in FRANK – a smart ambitious guy who gets way in over his head trying to be a part of something grand – but his acting is more focused here. His nervous exchanges, playing off of Isaac’s rich genius cockiness, give the film its humanity. However it’s the kind of humanity that may seal our race’s doom. 

It's easy to see why Gleeson's Caleb would fall for Vikander's alluring Ava, even when he's trying to keep in mind that she's a machine, albeit sentient. Vikander tops off the trio of terrific performances, and makes the viewer go through their own personal take on the Turing Test as well.

It builds brilliantly from an intriguing think piece into a thriller, that’s both psychological and technological, with an ending that floored me then stuck around to haunt me for days. This is cerebral film making of the highest order – Stanley Kubrick, who Isaac says in one of the bonus features that he patterned his character after, would’ve loved it.

Special Features: The 5-Part Featurette “Through the Looking Glass: Creating EX MACHINA,” 8 Behind-the-Scenes vignettes, and SXSW Q & A with cast and crew that's intermittently interesting if you've got an hour to kill.

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