Lacks originality - and from a Bourne film, that's especially disappointing

Rating: 6/10 (18 August 2012)

The biggest thing that this film made me realise was that the entire Bourne franchise contained an internal contradiction. The first three Bourne films were praised for the gritty realism of their action - heroes who actually hurt themselves, journeys that were delayed by traffic jams, etc. Yet when the plot finally unravelled its secrets, we find that Bourne and his ilk are genetically modified super-humans.
This film therefore has to treat these super-humans as, well slightly superhuman -- and the result is that the gritty realism is replaced with a character who's more like James Bond (but without the sophistication or humour) than Matt Damon's more realistic Everyman who was bewildered by his own capabilities. The script tries to deal with this by casting the hero as one drug-dependent man (plus Rachel Weisz) against the world, but it just ends up being another running away film, like the Fugitive.
Poor Weisz is cast as a scientist who has to run from her employers and spends most of the film running and looking scared. I'm not criticising her performance -- she's good at it -- but she should be because she's played exactly the same role before (e.g. in Chain Reaction), right down to her upper clothing gradually being reduced till she's running around in a singlet. She's a better actress than this film gives her the chance to express.
Some of the action sequences are pretty good, and the cast do their best with the material they're given. But the plot of this film is one you've seen many times before -- and from a Bourne film, that's particularly disappointing.