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puzzle that ultimately leads Bourne, as all the ads for the film have made clear, back to New York City in the final third of the film to track down the CIA members themselves who are linked to Treadstone. That includes David Strathairn as Noah Vosen, the major new addition to the cast. Pamela Landy, the CIA operative played by Joan Allen who made peace with Bourne in Supremacy, doesn’t see Bourne as a threat. But Vosen, who has more to lose if Bourne uncovers and makes public Treadstone’s secrets, needs to take him down immediately so the truth stays buried. It’s a testament to the writing and Strathairn’s always-brilliant acting that we don’t immediately realize Vosen and his immediate superiors’ motives aren’t necessarily on the up-and-up.
Yeah, the plot might seem Byzantine the way I describe it, but I’ll let you in on an embarrassing little secret: I don’t follow the plots of movies very well. I’m not good at picking up throwaway lines of exposition. I’m often quite content to be fairly lost and just go along for the ride. Since here, despite the levels of deceit and conflicting motives, I actually understood everything that was going on every step of the way, I’m inclined to say that the script is a finely-tuned masterpiece.
Seriously. The screenplay can’t take credit for the brilliantly shot and choreographed action sequences, which are at least as good as they have been in the past and remain one of the series’ big draws. But it does even manage to throw in some hefty questions of morality into the fold that ultimately gives the movie a heart beyond a series of action scenes and CIA antics; the movie even reaches some level of poignancy in a scene in which Bourne and a fellow trained assassin have a chance to actually talk rather than beat the crap out of each other: “Do you even know why they want you to kill me?”
An honorable mention is due for this film’s supporting cast. Damon, Strathairn, and Allen are all pros, definitely. But Paddy Considine, as the suddenly-in-danger reporter, also makes a strong impression with not much screen time, creating a fully-realized character through almost his movement and his eyes alone. And Julia Stiles, the series vet who gets her biggest role yet in this one, is also great, although I’m most impressed with her foresight: how did she know taking an extremely minor role in a random 2002 action movie would result in a lucrative three-movie run in a modern-classic franchise?
Movie Grade: A
Synopsis:
All he wanted was to disappear. Instead, Jason Bourne is now hunted by the people who made him what he is. Having lost his memory and the one person he loved, he is undeterred by the barrage of bullets and a new generation of highly-trained killers. Bourne has only one objective: to go back to the beginning and find out who he was.
Now, in ...
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