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The Bourne Legacy (2012)
Jeremy Renner, Rachel Wiesz, Edward Norton. Directed by Tony Gilroy.
You really don’t have to have seen the first three Bourne films to enjoy The Bourne Legacy, although some of the spy-vs.-spy stuff might get a little confusing if you haven’t. Jason Bourne is present in name only, and his actions in The Bourne Ultimatum create the situation Jeremy Renner’s Aaron Cross finds himself in, something Cross probably owes Bourne a punch in the face for, if the two should ever meet.
Cross is part of a different black-ops project, supposedly separate from Bourne’s Treadstone operation, but something happens and Cross’s program is “burnt to the ground” as worded by Edward Norton as Eric Beyer, an overseer of the CIA’s clandestine activities. That burning includes taking Cross out, but Cross figures out that his number’s up and manages to stay alive. He enlists the help of a geneticist (Rachel Weisz) who has been involved in the chemistry experiment that the government has been conducting on Cross and the other (now dead) agents. Cross depends on government-provided “chems” to maintain his mental acuity, but now that the government wants him dead, he needs to find a permanent solution, which Weisz can provide if they aren’t both killed first.
It’s a pretty cool setup. The film opens with a lengthy, dialogue-free sequence involving Cross on a training mission in the freezing environment of the Alaskan mountains. I was sucked in immediately. His brains, toughness, and difficult situation create a character it’s difficult not to root for. Early interactions with the Weisz character build more ethos. And there is a very cool cat-and-mice, high-tech (but not too high-tech) chase sequence where the main characters have an eighteen-hour head start on a government that doesn’t have a clue about which way they went and is thus not physically chasing them.
It is all quite engaging, up until the last thirty minutes or so, when this smart, tense movie becomes a very, very long actual chase scene. If you dig chase scenes, this is probably the climax of the film, but I find chase scenes to be mostly a drag, and there was really nothing to separate this one from any of the others I’ve seen in recent years.
It is a disappointing resolution to a pretty cool story, but not disappointing enough to erase my mostly good feelings about this picture. Weisz and Renner are as admirable and likable as Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne, and I would welcome another film with them in the lead roles.
Note: this film shares a title with a novel published after Rubert Ludlum’s death, written by someone else. The film is not based on that novel.
7/10 (IMDb rating)
74/100 (Criticker rating)
Jeremy Renner, Rachel Wiesz, Edward Norton. Directed by Tony Gilroy.
You really don’t have to have seen the first three Bourne films to enjoy The Bourne Legacy, although some of the spy-vs.-spy stuff might get a little confusing if you haven’t. Jason Bourne is present in name only, and his actions in The Bourne Ultimatum create the situation Jeremy Renner’s Aaron Cross finds himself in, something Cross probably owes Bourne a punch in the face for, if the two should ever meet.
Cross is part of a different black-ops project, supposedly separate from Bourne’s Treadstone operation, but something happens and Cross’s program is “burnt to the ground” as worded by Edward Norton as Eric Beyer, an overseer of the CIA’s clandestine activities. That burning includes taking Cross out, but Cross figures out that his number’s up and manages to stay alive. He enlists the help of a geneticist (Rachel Weisz) who has been involved in the chemistry experiment that the government has been conducting on Cross and the other (now dead) agents. Cross depends on government-provided “chems” to maintain his mental acuity, but now that the government wants him dead, he needs to find a permanent solution, which Weisz can provide if they aren’t both killed first.
It’s a pretty cool setup. The film opens with a lengthy, dialogue-free sequence involving Cross on a training mission in the freezing environment of the Alaskan mountains. I was sucked in immediately. His brains, toughness, and difficult situation create a character it’s difficult not to root for. Early interactions with the Weisz character build more ethos. And there is a very cool cat-and-mice, high-tech (but not too high-tech) chase sequence where the main characters have an eighteen-hour head start on a government that doesn’t have a clue about which way they went and is thus not physically chasing them.
It is all quite engaging, up until the last thirty minutes or so, when this smart, tense movie becomes a very, very long actual chase scene. If you dig chase scenes, this is probably the climax of the film, but I find chase scenes to be mostly a drag, and there was really nothing to separate this one from any of the others I’ve seen in recent years.
It is a disappointing resolution to a pretty cool story, but not disappointing enough to erase my mostly good feelings about this picture. Weisz and Renner are as admirable and likable as Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne, and I would welcome another film with them in the lead roles.
Note: this film shares a title with a novel published after Rubert Ludlum’s death, written by someone else. The film is not based on that novel.
7/10 (IMDb rating)
74/100 (Criticker rating)