It could have been so much better structured

Rating: 7/10 (6 October 2012)

This film is in the perfect continuity of the first three in the series by its title which has the same structure as the first three. But I am disappointed in a way.
The action is probably perfect though it is only an escape and not a chase to impose a positive end, only to get away from those who are chasing you. That's weak. For sure we have Manilla and the cars, the motorbikes, the hunt on the roofs and even a long hike in Alaska. I must say that the wolves are superb animals and that it is a shame so many are killed. Though a drone and a missile for one wolf seems slightly expensive.
The plot is simple but unexplained at all. The secret security services of the USA have set up several programs to fight against terrorism, each one of them totally entangled into the others but with one probably slightly more central than the others. A hostile foreign agency that is not identified is trying to get this program and this program has a fair chance to get out because the main people who devised it are not under control. So the decision is taken to destroy the program and to get rid of all those who have been in touch with it, no matter how little.
The worst part is that even the uniformed generals (note the only one that is brought up is black: no allusion to the president that we all know to be powerless) do not know about the situation and it is a handful of bureaucrats of these security agencies that have no public front who take decisions and implement the decisions they take under absolutely no control from whoever you may imagine. The President is not even mentioned. In other words they are, these bureaucrats a state in the sate. The USA have reinvented ,the KGB, the STASI, and those had a public front, even the SS was not completely invisible.
Unluckily this theme has already been explored vastly in the genre over the last fifty years.
It goes slightly further when we learn that this program aimed at producing super human people who did not feel pain, who had an IQ over 200 and who were as strong as aliens. These prototypes were nine and are still six and they have to be eliminated along with all the people who worked on this program. These prototypes were produced by some genetic manipulation of viruses or retroviruses to change the human genome of the individuals who are infected with these genetically modified viruses. But here again that has been used and overused, some could say abused, over the last fifty years in all media imaginable.
To amplify this lack of originality we have to regret the very editing of the film that lines up short sequences that have no relation whatsoever one to the other, no ellipse possible, and that do not make sense for at least a good fourth of the film. This is also quite surprising and disappointing. Jason Bourne had made sure in the previous films that we should know the targets and agents, who is who from the very start and to have a real objective that brought down these security bureaucrats and gave decisional power back to those elected and appointed for that under the strict control of the Senate.
That explains my slight disappointment. Where is the American dream in that fantasy? Dr Jacques COULARDEAU