Movie Review: The Bourne Legacy (2012)

The Bourne Legacy (2012) co-written and directed by Tony Gilroy

This summer has lots of sequels and remakes coming out, so I'm reviewing the earlier works and seeing if they will inspire me to see the new films! 

While the last events of The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) are playing out, this side story is happening. Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) is on a training exercise in the Alaskan wilderness while the heads of spy-dom in Washington, D.C., are scrambling to contain the potential fallout from Jason Bourne's story going public. That means they need to shut down Treadstone, the program associated with Bourne, and any other related programs that can be traced from Treadstone. Cross's program can be linked to Treadstone, so they have to eliminate all those field agents. They fail to knock off Cross; they almost succeed in wiping out the lab that processed the agents. One doctor, Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz), survives. She has enough information that the spy-dom folks try again to eliminate her, but by this time Cross has made it back to the D.C. area and saves her. They go on the run. She just wants to survive. He needs the drugs they've been using to enhance his abilities. The pills are manufactured in Manilla, so a world-wide chase is on.

The movie starts off slowly. Cross is wandering through Alaska for no apparent reason other than to showcase some impressive stunts and introduce the blue and green pills that make him better. Intercut with this is Col. Byer (Edward Norton) convincing everyone to shut down Treadstone and its progeny, another slow moving process. The action picks up when they try to kill Cross with a drone strike. All of the spy plotting and behind-the-scenes machinations are less believable and less interesting than the action sequences. The final chase in Manilla is the star of the movie. Renner and Norton give good performances but their characters are not as compelling as previous heroes and villains in the Bourne films.

Good as an action film (though there isn't quite enough action to make it a great action film) and underwhelming as a spy/conspiracy thriller.

The new Bourne movie, Jason Bourne, promises lots of action...



I'm not sure there's any spy/conspiracy thriller left, but I supposed I'd watch One-Punch Man in a lot of fun action scenes (though the first part of the trailer is greatest hits (some literally) of the earlier films). He looks more like Jason Statham than Jason Bourne in this trailer.