The Bourne Legacy: movie review
The fourth installment of the 鈥淏ourne鈥� franchise dispenses with Matt Damon, who took a pass this time, and instead gives us Jeremy Renner as Aaron Cross, another off-the-grid special forces agent with a grudge.
Unlike Jason Bourne (Damon), Aaron has a mostly intact memory, but it all amounts to the same thing. He was part of a program called Operation Outcome that, with the help of a regular regimen of little blue and green pills, greatly enhanced his mental and physical capacities. With Jason 鈥渋nfecting鈥� top-secret programs as a renegade loose in New York (this film dovetails the conclusion of 鈥�The Bourne Ultimatum鈥�), the 眉ber-ops bad guy played by Edward Norton decides Aaron and his Outcome cohorts have to go bye-bye.
Running from CIA assassins and government agents, Aaron鈥檚 main motivation here is pharmaceutical. He鈥檚 run out of those pills. Enter genetic scientist Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz), who has been on the top-secret government payroll but sees the light. She helps engineer Aaron鈥檚 chemical make-over 鈥� but not before a lot of shootouts and chase scenes culminating in a smackdown in Manila. Thanks to a skimpy back story, the stalwart Renner is somewhat characterless. Director and co-writer Tony Gilroy, a veteran of the 鈥淏ourne鈥� series, is good at scenes of high-level nastiness, but there鈥檚 too much confusing exposition in this 鈥淟egacy鈥� and the action scenes, some of them good, are too little and too late. Grade: B- (Rated PG-13 for violence and action sequences.)
