There are certain franchises that should be left alone, like for example, Pirates of the Caribbean, Transformers, and Indiana Jones. Those franchises are best recorded in history as outstanding trilogies. Bourne franchise goes into that category too. Yet, we are forced to see this new film, The Bourne Legacy, which features the name of the most engaging man in modern action films but does not feature him in the actual film. We can still buy Pirates with no Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann or (with an eyebrow-cringe) a clone Ripley in Alien 4, but Bourne without Bourne himself? It's like Jaws with guppies.
The trailers are, to be honest, misleading. Aaron Cross/Kenneth Kitsom (Jeremy Renner) isn't Treadstone. He's a part of a whole other program called Outcome. If you think that Dr. Hirsch (Albert Finney) is the mastermind of this all, you're wrong. There's this other puppeteer named Ric Byer (Ed Norton) who is responsible in making super soldiers for America, one of them Aaron Cross. Because of the events that occured in the Bourne trilogy, the dark ops in CIA are forced to clean up their messy things. People disappeared, killed, or looks to be killed. Operation Outcome is also being cleaned up, but they missed Aaron Cross.
This film entry feels like Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, where the story shouldn't be filmed. It is unworthy of filming. The character Aaron Cross isn't introduced clearly. What is Outcome? What's its purpose? Why did Aaron Cross and others doesn't look like soldiers albeit their addiction to special drugs that said can maximize intelligence and strength? Why did they have to addicted to those drugs? Is this a set up for the bloody sequel? Jeremy Renner did a great job here, but his character Aaron Cross isn't as magnetic as Matt Damon's Jason Bourne. Bourne is silent, mysterious, super clever, and cool whereas Cross is able-bodied yes, yet talky and quite frankly, annoying but most importantly, he isn't Bourne. Also, Ric Byer's position in this whole messy things isn't established well. Who is he? What did he really do apart from 'being in bed' with Dr. Hirsch (whom he eventually killed too, spoilers)? I'd like to rephrase my previous statement: The trailers are deceptive. We are promised incredible action and super-tight connection to (at least) The Bourne Ultimatum, but what do we get? Joan Allen and David Straithairn for 30 seconds, Albert Finney in a too-HD-to-be-true YouTube video, and Paddy Considine from Ultimatum archive footage. The actors are doing their job well, especially Renner and Rachel Weisz who looks great together on screen (I have to say honestly that Rachel Weisz looks great on screen with whoever she shared the screen with, even with only herself--I'm talking in every film). The worst job to be in is in Tony Gilroy's chair as director. What made the previous Bourne films interesting is the signature Greengrass-shaky cam and that is absent here and that made the film less interesting and indistinguishable from other spy/secret agent films. I have a feeling that Tony Gilroy is just interested in making money out of an already well-established franchise. Thank god, the script is still a bit smarter than your average secret agent films. The chase scene in Manila is great and the house action scene is also cool. Actually those are the only scenes that have some action for more than 15 seconds. I was hoping that Matt Damon would pop up in the ending somewhere to make this movie viewing worthwhile, but sadly no. The Bourne Legacy is too talky. This is the worst excuse to make an action film. I would rather see that Bourne's legacy was a CIA-courtroom-drama-while-chasing-Jason-Bourne film because that would be the real legacy. The Bourne Legacy: rated 2 out of 4.
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