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Review of Jason Bourne (John Powell/David Buckley)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if your admiration of John Powell's music for the concept can tolerate a disappointingly routine entry that fails to musically enhance the drama or narrative of the plotline beyond its simple, rhythmic adrenaline rush.

Avoid it... if you expect more than just a few minutes of the score material to compete in your memory with the impressive new Moby rendition of the "Extreme Ways" song for the end credits.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Jason Bourne: (John Powell/David Buckley) After 2007's The Bourne Ultimatum, director Paul Greengrass and main actor Matt Damon excused themselves from the franchise while it lurched forward with the forgettable 2012 spin-off, The Bourne Legacy. The original crew eventually reunited for a fourth proper Bourne-related film in 2016, however, and Jason Bourne resurrected the franchise's box office prowess despite its intensely violent killing sequences. No longer as inspired directly from a Robert Ludlum novel, the titular former CIA operative spends this fourth film finally learning the remaining parameters of his past, including his familial connections to the agency and the true intentions of its leadership. After the often gruesome deaths of the majority of the story's characters, Bourne has answers but no easy solutions, setting up the potential for additional direct sequels, crew permitting. The music for this franchise has never been fantastic outside of context, though John Powell's late replacement score for The Bourne Identity is often credited with unintentionally starting the cello action ostinato craze that followed in the subsequent decade of chase scenes on the big screen. Powell's music for the franchise improved in dramatic scope with his sequels, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, before James Newton Howard's stand-in work for The Bourne Legacy disappointed with its rather faceless imitation of Powell's base sound and no new avenues of exploration. For Jason Bourne, Powell returns, though primary compositional credit is shared with collaborator and synthetics expert David Buckley. There has been much speculation about why Buckley's greater role existed in this score, though there was likely a combination of many factors at work. Powell had shown a personal distaste for mindless action films in the late 2000's, thus explaining his concentration on the children's genre. He was also dealing with the death of his wife at the time of production for Jason Bourne, and while this return to a familiar soundscape was a welcome distraction, it could not compete with the issues pertaining to Powell's grief. There's also the artistic argument to made, one that suggests that the ever-increasing role of technology in these films requires a better developed electronic presence in the soundscape, and Buckley certainly steps up that element in Jason Bourne.

Unfortunately, the resulting score for Jason Bourne is almost all process and almost no heart, the familiar elements of the franchise's past still there but the gripping emotional moments of Powell's better cues for the concept sadly absent. The trademark ostinato formations return, but not with the intense staccato force as before, a circumstance perhaps due to the increased amount of electronic layers covering those strings. You hear the ostinatos at their best in "Motorcycle Chase" and "Strip Chase," though these cues are not highlights in the franchise. The rather anonymous applications of the constant rhythmic formations causes this score to suffice but not excel, emulating Howard's stance for the prior film in the series. The primary bassoon theme for Bourne himself is expressed early in "I Remember Everything" before additional reprises at the outsets of "Strip Chase" and "Let Me Think About It." Sadly, for a film with as much illumination about Bourne's past, there's very little satisfaction in how this idea is developed or resolved (if such a thing is ever possible). There is very little narrative flow to this score, in part because of the plot's constant movement without concrete respite. The softer moments of the work, which in the prior entries were moments during which the listener could catch his breath, simply become dull bores, the lack of gravity in any of these cues a tremendous disappointment. Even the percussive slapping sounds stale, conflicting at times with the electronic accents. The entirety of the score is comforting in a minimal sense because of its familiarity, but it's annoying in its lack of any attempt to evolve. One area of potential was the presence of Moby's "Extreme Ways" song, the stalwart of the franchise's end credits. The song has experienced a welcome update for Jason Bourne, including some stylish female background vocals (mixed, unfortunately too far back to have their maximum effect, though), but outside of its really nice transition straight out of the crescendo of string pulses that conclude "Let Me Think About It," there continues to be no greater integration between the score and song identities that have come to define this concept. In the end, listeners will be pleased by the revision to the Moby song and, perhaps, find inspiration in some pairing of "Motorcycle Chase" and "Let Me Think About It" that could lead into the song as a suite of memorable music from the film. Otherwise, the Powell sound that showed promise in the first two sequels has devolved back into an anonymous rut, the drama of the concept lost in the grating, churning mechanisms of the score's faceless rhythms.  **

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 61:12

• 1. I Remember Everything (2:08) • 2. Backdoor Breach (3:56) • 3. Converging in Athens (4:20) • 4. Motorcycle Chase (8:57) • 5. A Key to the Past (1:42) • 6. Berlin (2:02) • 7. Decrypted (5:32) • 8. Flat Assault (2:50)

• 9. Paddington Plaza (6:48) • 10. White Van Plan (2:48) • 11. Vegas Arrival (2:50) • 12. Following the Target (2:48) • 13. Strip Chase (5:48) • 14. An Interesting Proposal (2:10) • 15. Let Me Think About It (2:26) • 16. Extreme Ways (Jason Bourne Remix)* (4:55)

NOTES & QUOTES:

The insert includes a list of performers but no extra information about the score or film.

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