Review: The Bourne Legacy

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Rachel Weisz and Jeremy Renner in The Bourne Legacy

Is an action movie really an action movie if only a third of it moves at a fast pace? The Bourne Legacy is the slowest of that genre I've seen in a while. The overwhelming sense of urgency woven into the earlier trilogy is missing in this new addition to the franchise. Unfortunately, also missing is any convincing reason for the audience to root for the new protagonist, Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner).

Like Jason Bourne, Aaron Cross is part of a covert operation by the U.S. government. Elements of The Bourne Ultimatum (even exact scenes) show up in The Bourne Legacy as these ops are about to be exposed. Cross is involved in Outcome, a program which doses former soldiers with viral pills to increase their smarts and physicality and make them super-spies or something like. Retired Col. Eric Byer (Edward Norton with gray hair), afraid that the secrets of the Department of Defense's program will soon come to light, decides to end the program.

Somehow the stoic and emotionally detached Cross keeps plugging along, in search of more blue pills to keep his intelligence high. He finds Dr. Marta Shearing, played by Rachel Weisz, who had dealt with him at her research facility. In shock after surviving a mass shooting at her workplace (watching this fictional mass killing after the real recent attacks in CO and WI was extremely uncomfortable), Marta gets pulled into Aaron's quest.

The dialogue between their characters as they escape from the scene in Maryland is laughable for all the wrong reasons. Weisz is forced to spout lines such as, "I know my job, which is science!" while Renner keeps muttering about his "chems." If you play a drinking game and take a shot every time she says the word "science" or he says "chems," you will be drunk before the movie's midpoint.

I am such a fan of the Bourne movies that I made sure to rewatch The Bourne Identity and Ultimatum last weekend, so the differences between these and The Bourne Legacy stood in sharp relief. Although director Tony Gilroy worked on the screenplays for all of these movies, he and his co-writer brother Dan are unable to make the story flow in this film. Legacy stutters from the start and never fully gathers momentum. When high-speed action is onscreen, like a motorcycle chase, the frames are too frenetic and make it difficult to follow what exactly is happening. It's messy.

Besides, a plot about a guy who doesn't want to go back to being unintelligent just doesn't have the same oomph and drive as that of a guy with amnesia realizing he used to be a killer. It also bothered me that Aaron Cross kills weaker men who try fighting him without any visible feelings of regret, whereas such acts hit Jason Bourne hard emotionally.

This is Renner's first blockbuster leading role, and the faults of The Bourne Legacy are not fully his -- although he and Weisz never establish any believable chemistry between their characters. It's the screenplay that never rises to the level of previous Bourne films, and the direction that is unable to cobble an interesting tale together.