‘Jason Bourne’ is Summer Blockbuster Fare at its Worst

Jason Bourne is the latest in the film series based on the Robert Ludlum spy novels, and this fifth installment marks the return of Matt Damon, after Jeremy Renner stepped in for The Bourne Legacy in 2012. According to the website Cinema Blend, Damon agreed to come back to the franchise because Paul Greengrass, director of Parts 2 and 3, was also returning. I’m relieved for Jeremy Renner, not so thrilled for Matt Damon. Neither of these actors deserves this series, although it does less harm for Damon as an actor and more good for his career, because he’s already positioned himself as our next Everyman, the new Tom Hanks or Harrison Ford or Gary Cooper. But Jason Bourne is an ugly movie, the epitome of the summer blockbuster at its worst, collapsing in on itself like a ramshackle house built on top of a sinkhole. It’s the Donald Trump of summer movies: nonsensical, excessive, depressing. 

It’s somewhat shocking to me that people actually relish this series. Matt Damon, likable as he is, isn’t enough for me. Others are, I think, turned on by the movies’ supposedly “high-octane” thrills. All of the films move rapidly. Barry Ackroyd, the cinematographer of Jason Bourne, maintains this tradition. His camera never stops, and it’s almost constantly in close-up. It feels like we’re peaking over the actors’ shoulders and pressing our faces up against windows, hovering so closely we can paint our hot breath onto the panes. But this is ugly filmmaking. The camera advances its chaotic story with all the finesse of a child violently shaking a LEGO man out of a toy car. There’s no magic, no organic excitement, merely the cheap thrills of flashiness that represent impoverished storytelling. And Jason Bourne feels particularly repellant in its ugliness, for it’s both ugly as a movie and ugly at heart. For a film this corporate to be so cynical about American government feels like blatant hypocrisy. There’s some grim talk of patriotism: Jason Bourne is a rogue CIA man who’s being hunted by his own government, unless they can persuade him to rejoin their forces. 

Why the CIA would want him back is something of a mystery, since they have a masterful hired assassin, played by Vincent Cassel, working for them. Cassel, with his narrow, upside-down triangle of a face and his frog-like eyes, is somehow handsome, yet he’s unusual too.  Seventy years ago he would have been playing parts meant for Peter Lorre, except that he’s taller and more calculating. He makes glamour out of his corruption, and even with a part as one-note as this, Cassel conveys presence and humor, always striking a sharp contrast to the gloomy character played by Matt Damon. Damon, on the other hand, is an ideal good guy, driven by his own moral code when he realizes the moral code of his country has deceived him.

Jason Bourne wants desperately to have something to say, but it’s far too shallow to make much of its promising themes. The film concerns itself with surveillance in the digital age: Riz Ahmed plays a billionaire social media mogul, who took money from the government to fund his social networking site, in exchange for data on millions of private citizens; Julia Stiles plays a hacker who steals files from the CIA, which enables an opportunistic rookie played by Alicia Vikander to exhibit her tech savvy and get the files back. (She wants to impress her superior, played by Tommy Lee Jones, but she also wants to surpass him.) Vikander’s character deletes the files remotely, just after they’ve been transmitted to Jason Bourne. Vikander’s performance is too grim too, and she looks like a baby, perhaps because she’s so often acting opposite grizzled old Tommy Lee. 

'U.N.C.L.E.' IS A DELIGHTFUL COLD WAR COMIC-THRILLER

Somewhere around the mid-point of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., the film's two spy heroes, an American named Napoleon Solo and a Russian named Illya Kuryakin, find themselves careening through enemy waters at a shipping yard, where military borders have cut them off and they're being pummeled by gun-runners in enemy boats giving chase, until Napoleon is thrown into the water, unbeknownst to his partner. As his counterpart full-speeds ahead, Napoleon casually swims ashore and climbs into a waiting truck, where he turns on the radio, uncovers a picnic basket, and uncorks a bottle of something warm and inviting. He appears to be having a lark, and in the background, to the tune of the romantic, jovial Italian song playing on the radio, we see the speedboat circling and circling and circling. This is one example of the wonderful levity we get in director Guy Ritchie's update of the classic TV show.

Henry Cavill, who did not make much of a lasting impression on me in Man of Steel, seizes command of the screen in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. as the cavalier, dashing American spy, a carer criminal whose skills were so good that the CIA decided to waive his criminal charges and convert him from an enemy to an asset. Cavill looks like a wily fox with an ever-present, knowing grin on his face. He's as much of a smart-ass as Chevy Chase was in Fletch, only Cavill's wit never calcifies into contempt. Here's why: once he's given us the show of not caring about his partner's imminent danger (the boat eventually explodes and the Russian spy sinks into the river), Cavill drives that truck into the water and patiently lets it sink. Then he rolls down the window, swims out, and pulls his unconscious friend from the water.

Armie Hammer, playing the tight, intensely serious Russian spy who's always trying to tame his rage, is the perfect foil-companion in this charming, ingratiating buddy-Cold War-comic-thriller. When we first meet Hammer's character, he's trying to kill Cavill, who's been sent to find and retrieve a young woman named Gaby Teller (her father is a renowned Nazi scientist). Pretty soon, as the men find themselves working together on the same mission, they're fighting over what clothes Gaby should wear. (As part of their cover-up, she's pretending to be Hammer's fiance.) Cavill and Hammer bicker over the outfits each has selected for Gaby, and hurl their own fashion insults at each other too: "Your tie doesn't match your suit," Cavill sniffs with superior fashion resolve, and it's as if he's insulted Hammer's mother, or called his manhood into question.

The cajoling between Cavill and Hammer is delightful, and full of clever little double entendres. This is what we should be getting more of in the summer: light-hearted and fun movies that find interesting characters to play against each other. And what's more, director Guy Ritchie manages to work out a legitimately fascinating spy plot as a canvass for his humor. But the relationship between these two men is always at the heart of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and it's their tense, unexpected friendship which endears us to the movie, and which makes the spy-thriller plot somehow less important, even though it is terrifically involving. Ritchie knows how to balance the unfolding Cold War yarn with increasingly more complex character relationships, and he's given two wonderful performers the chance to show us what they're made of, and react to each other in fresh and amusing ways.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. may be my favorite big summer movie of 2015, because unlike so many other big summer movies, it knows how to shape a story, how to build suspense, how to use things like pacing and interplay between characters, and good filmmaking techniques, to create something that's actually worth looking at for two hours. There aren't a whole lot of overblown action scenes, and none of them feel exhausting, the way so many summer movies do. Instead, everything about U.N.C.L.E. pops and fizzes just when as it should, and Ritchie stops to savor things like the beauty of Rome, or the finesse of his actors' often striking wardrobe, or their various idiosyncrasies, like the way Armie Hammer's hand trembles when he's desperately trying to control his seething anger, or the way Henry Cavill flashes a smile that's somehow equal parts "screw you," "I told you so," and, finally, an amorous "hello there." In short, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. has a lot going on in it, and it's a welcome change for those of us who feel deadened by the monotony of the same old superhero flicks. I don't know where Guy Ritchie's been keeping all this good stuff, because I certainly didn't feel it in his disappointing Sherlock Holmes, but his U.N.C.L.E. is a fantastic entertainment. 

With Alicia Vikander and Elizabeth Debicki (both giving fine performances: Vikander as the always game and smart Gaby, and Debicki as a flirtatious, stylish villain Victoria, who just so happens to be in the market for some warheads), and a brief but amusing turn by Hugh Grant as a British intelligence official. Written by Guy Ritchie and Lionel Wigram.