Oops! Matt Isn't Quite Back Yet.
I've seen Jason Bourne.
When the film began I heard a familiar, reassuring musical refrain and felt immediately reassured. You Know Who Was Back. I could not abide The Bourne Legacy. The constant barrage of pseudo-scientific babble about some kind of radical genetic modification enhancing the strength and mobility of various Treadstone agents was baffling, unnecessary, utterly uncomplying, and fatally dehumanising. Didn’t we go down this road with Steve Rogers in Captain America The First Avenger? Steve Rogers wears a costume and fights alongside giant green ogres and Nordic thunder gods who can command the storms with a throaty whisper. Give me a Bourne who is human and well trained and I’m happy. I’ve watched athletic human outliers like Simone Biles and Usain Bolt in action. Bourne is the credible Lance Armstrong of his generation, there's need for all those blue pills and pinks pills. He’s Matt Damon. We believe in what we see.
With hardly any delay Matt Damon appeared on screen. His hair was brown, messy and deflated. My heart sunk and I knew I was in trouble. There was a time when the youthful heartthrob Matt Damon was being positioned as Hollywood’s golden boy 2.0; a safe backup in case Brad Pitt flamed out on drugs, married the wrong woman or committed career suicide by becoming a Scientologist. During his early career when Young Matt made Field of Dreams, Good Will Hunting, Rounders and the Legend of Beggar Falls, his producers always ensured Matt’s immaculately trimmed hair appeared to be full of blonde solar fire and insisted he flashed his white, toothy grin every seven minutes or so. A healthy blonde tint suits Matt as it brings out Matt’s “All American Can Do” spirit, but if his hair goes dark watch out. Whenever Matt stars in vehicles like Courage Under Fire, Dogma, The Good Shepherd, Interstellar and he’s playing bad his hair turns a dark mousey brown and his whites are rarely on show.
I can’t take my eyes off Matt. He’s full on 9/11: covered in dust; hair unwashed; Lord, even his cheeks are dirty! We’ve seen this before with glamorous Hollywood blondes. Way, way back, the grouchy big bear Nick Nolte put together the template for all aspiring character actors who were trapped by their matinee idol profiles. When surfer blonde Nick was working on the set of a big blockbuster like 48 hours with Eddie Murphy or The Prince of Tides with Barbra Streisand, the peroxide bottles couldn’t be delivered to the set quick enough. There’s no doubting Brad Pitt followed Nick’s cue. Take a look at Brad’s star-making projects: A River Runs Through It, Legends of the Fall, Meet Joe Black, Troy, Fight Club and The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button. By fuck he’s carrying enough blonde around to burn out your cornea.
Do you remember back in 2007 when Brad tried to sweep every Oscar in every available category ever made when he dropped The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford? (My fingers almost gave out while typing that title.) The movie was an artfully languid indictment of America’s unhealty obsession with celebrity and was built with one objective l in mind: to permanently eradicate the patently undeserved notion that Brad was merely a pretty face out of the great American psyche. Brad poured his heart and soul into this project. And what colour was his hair in the movie? Jet fucking black! (You might not know this because only about sixteen people went to see the movie. They were all homeless folks from New Orleans whom Brad was building free homes for and could hardly say No.)
Let’s face it, what worked for Nick worked for Brad and it sure as hell worked for Matt. Come on. What’s the difference? Tallish, blonde, good teeth, non-threatening. And you all know Brad was lined up to play Jason Bourne in the Bourne Identity before he injured his foot and a certain other blonde motherfucker stepped in and grabbed a billion dollar franchise from Mr. Pitt. Hmmm
So I knew when I first saw Matt appear on the screen, with all of his natural movie star glamour washed out of the frame I knew I was in for a grim ride - and the grim never let up. I got the message though. Jason Bourne is set in a post-Snowden post-Iraq, post-Libya messed-up world. Even though Matt is an American he’s suffered as much as those poor displaced brown refugees who are now dangling over the sides of battered, sea-faring commodes all over Europe’s desperate-to-stay-white shores. Matt is so dusty he almost looks brown. He’s running around all kinds of dirty, germ-filled places and barely surviving by his fists and wits. He’s an all-purpose American refugee at large with no visible income.
Brad dyed his hair black for his Jesse James’ role. Matt has, in a spiritual sense, gone black for his latest Bourne outing; black as in the globally generic bone-arse poor, lacking access to health care, having no medical insurance and misunderstood by the police. Come to think of it Jason Bourne is permanently on some kind of never ending death-row so maybe the African-American angle can work too. Clearly, the Bourne producers have heard the mass clamour for Idras Elba to take over the Bond franchise and they are cleverly subverting any of this rank nonsense from coming their way.
What’s to say about the movie? Matt fired off some guns. He drove a car quickly. He beat up the bad guy, but…. the whole ride lacked soul. It lacked depth. It lacked romance. I was hoping Bourne might hook up with Nicky Parson but she bit the bullet in no time at all and that was that. This was a mistake. For all the ear shattering, jaw shaking explosions and nasty eye-gouging Jason Bourne has always been a deeply romantic hero.
Let’s consider the actors who have played Jason Bourne over the years: in the 1998 TV series of the Bourne Identity, Bourne was played by the cultivated Canadian actor Richard Chamberlain aka Doctor Kildaire. Chamberlain was the stand out TV heartthrob of his era. Brad Pitt, the leading matinee idol of his generation was the first pick for the 2002 movie. When Brad injured his knee we all know who replaced him; the charming romantic lead who charmed Minnie Driver’s socks off in Good Will Hunting.
The Bourne Identity is held together by the unfolding romance between Bourne and Franka. Bourne’s ability to love, to protect those he cares for, is what separates Jason Bourne from his glassy-eyed Treadstone brothers When you watch the movie you don’t only worry about Bourne making it to the end alive, you worry about this couple surviving together. In the movie’s final scene, Franka waits hopefully for Jason in a bar on an idyllic island. When Jason enters the bar he’s wearing a loose, floppy white shirt and he can’t help letting rip with a wide, fulsome grin. He’s perfect “damaged lover to stable hubby” material. When Franka bit the bullet in the movie’s sequel a singular holding light went out of the series that has never came back on. Recasting Matt in the main role and having him being chased from pillar to post while looking suitably downcast isn’t nearly enough. When Jason Bourne 5 comes around I’m hoping for some thoughtful dialogue and a lot more soul.
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For the record:
Assassination Of Jess James:
Domestic Gross: $3,909,149 26.1%
Foreign Gross: $11,092,627 73%.
Worldwide Gross: $15,001,776
Source: Box Office Mojo.