By James Mottram
“I’m in it, I’m in it,” French actor, Vincent Cassel laughs at The Cannes Film Festival when asked about his appearance in the trailer for the highly anticipated thriller, Jason Bourne, which continues the on-screen exploits of Matt Damon’s eponymous now-not-quite-so-amnesiac rogue government operative. “It’s one of the classiest franchises on the market. Paul Greengrass is a wonderful director, and I’m glad to be in it. It’s a long process. I just finished the movie two months ago, and I think we shot for seven months. So I spent seven months being alone with a gun fighting! But it’s going to look good. Paul Greengrass invented that style.”
So the English director of Captain Phillips, United 93, Bloody Sunday, Green Zone, and the previous two Damon-starring Bourne flicks is maintaining his famously gritty, documentary-style aesthetic? “He’s raising the stakes on it, but it’s still a genre movie,” Cassel replies. “He kept on saying, ‘It’s a popcorn movie! It’s a popcorn movie!’ But the way that he talks about it is a real directing process. He comes from documentary, so he’s looking for that flavour, and the process to make it work. To make those incredible, non-realistic things look real is not an easy task, and he does it the best.”
Typically for Frenchman Cassel, Jason Bourne might be another foray into English-language film (alongside the likes of Black Swan, A Dangerous Method, Partisan, and Child 44), but it’s not exactly a standard Hollywood flick, despite the big budget and studio backing. “Paul is English, and the whole crew was English,” Cassel explains. “And Paul loves wine!” But will Cassel fit the Hollywood stereotype of the European villain? “The real villain is the government, and we all work for him. That’s the problem with the Bourne movies: people work for a big bad, dark system, and they have to cope with it. So, is Jason Bourne a good guy? I don’t know.”
Jason Bourne will be released on July 28.
