The first full trailer for the fourth Bourne movie—fifth if you count Jeremy Renner’s Bourne Legacy, which no one does—was just released and it’s got lots and lots of sweaty, glowering Matt Damon throwing punches and shooting people in the face. Sadly, this one does not have a ridiculous Bourne movie name like The Bourne Compendium, but instead is going with the boring, bland Jason Bourne. The movie does not look boring and bland, though. It looks like a movie deserving of a more singular title like The Bourne Synchronicity.
It’s been nine years since we’ve seen Jason Bourne, and there’s a bit of grey in his hair to signal the passing of time. He’s got his memory back, and it seems he’s spent the intervening years in fight club. But then Kat Stratford shows up to open a new can of spy-worms and off Bourne goes to solve more international mysteries. The new cast includes Tommy Lee Jones as the latest CIA honcho responsible for tracking/trapping Bourne, and Alicia Vikander as a CIA agent, with Vincent Cassel as someone trying to kill Bourne.
All of the markers of a Bourne movie are here—bare-knuckle brawling, car chases, Matt Damon and his Bambi eyes looking impossibly sad as he chokes the life out of someone. That chase sequence in Las Vegas still looks straight out of Fast/Furious to me, but the stakes of action cinema have gone up a lot in the last decade. We’re used to gonzo chases and fight sequences—a trend which The Bourne Identity kicked off—so every movie has to try and top the one before it. And to be fair, Jason Bourne looks like a really solid action movie. It’s showing us everything we want from Bourne, and teasing some potentially awesome action sequences. Summers have come to be dominated by superhero movies, but I have a feeling this summer will feature a surprisingly big outing from Jason Bourne.
