Review: The Bourne Legacy

Review: The Bourne Legacy

The Bourne Legacy arrives during an interesting cinematic era. Where the original thrilling Bourne series left us speechless with its new take on the CIA and secret agents - making James Bond look old fashioned - Legacy pops its head up at a time where superheroic action and audience pleasing comedy are the blockbusting elite. It's like an unwelcome guest at a party who has one or two neat tricks but nothing particularly special. Perhaps, while struggling for titles for the film, the movie executives were juggling 'The Bourne Sustainability' or 'The Bourne Less Shooty More Talky.'

So where are we with the story so far? The Bourne Ultimatum's conclusion saw Jason Bourne expose the conspiracies behind the CIA's Treadstone Operation and head underground into hiding. The task falls to Avengers star Jeremy Renner to take the reigns of the franchise as we follow events occuring simultaneously to the original trilogy. 

Aaron Cross (Renner) is a member of Operation Outcome, one of the Department of Defense's black ops programs which provides its agents with green pills that enhance physical abilities and blue pills that enhance mental abilities. While Cross is assigned on a mission to Alaska, Eric Byer (Edward Norton), the leader of the programme, is told that Jason Bourne has exposed the Treadstone Operation. Byer decides to eliminate Operation Outcome and all of its agents in order to maintain its secrecy and tie up all loose ends that could be traced back to the CIA. After a failed assassination attempt on his life, Aaron goes on the run with scientist Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz) who claims she can renew his supply of green and blue pills to avoid his body going into meltdown.

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The fourth movie in the Bourne franchise is Bourne without Bourne; it's almost like having Mission Impossible without Tom Cruise. The hand just doesn't fit the glove naturally, and the movie feels more like a cheesy spin-off rather than a definite sequel to the series. The films overlap ever so slightly - the last hour of The Bourne Ultimatum slots in perfectly alongside the first hour of The Bourne Legacy. Yet Legacy is completely unnecessary, and that feeling is persistent all the way through its stupendously long 134 minute running time. The film takes a frustratingly long time to get going. 'You think Jason Bourne was the whole story? There's much more going on here,' says Byer. Okay, cool. Let's see what you've got. 'Jason Bourne was just the tip of the iceberg,' repeats Byer soon after. Yes, you've said that already. We get it. Move on. 'Aaron Cross is like Jason Bourne without the inconsistency,' Byer mumbles. Sigh.

Jeremy Renner and Edward Norton are really the stars of the show. Where the wheels of the plot take an age to start spinning, their bitter rivalry is a fiercely resistant force driving the movie forward. Renner, who already faces the heavily uphill task of replacing Matt Damon, gives a brilliant performance as Aaron Cross despite the lame script. He can do the action, sure. His previous endeavours in The Avengers and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol have proved that. His character, however, is never truly fleshed out, and the fact that Cross needs to take pills to avoid his brain and body going into crisis makes him feel like an emotionless superhuman. The race against time to take medicine is heavily reminiscent of the movie Crank, in which Jason Statham was forced to keep his heart rate up to stop his body shutting down. At least Crank knew its own position as a tongue-in-cheek comedy thriller - Legacy does everything with a straight face where the audience is laughing.

As for the action, director Tony Gilroy refuses to do anything honestly. The Bourne Ultimatum featured an incredible stunt where Matt Damon's character jumped from a rooftop and crashed through a closed window - all in one shot. Gilroy, however, is satisfied with allowing Renner to leap from rooftop to rooftop, cutting the shot pre or mid-jump on too many occasions. Also, where the original trilogy's shaky-cam action scenes were annoying enough as we struggled to see who was hitting who, Legacy's camera work is even more unsettling. As Aaron fights wolves bare handed in the wilderness, we get the impression that the cameraman is standing on top of an enormous giant rubber ball and he's struggling to keep his balance. Shaky-cam creates excitement, sure, but Legacy ensures that excitement is overpowered by pure confusion and frustration.

Summary

The Bourne Legacy uses the original trilogy as a launch pad into new territory, however the film just doesn't jump high enough. Frustratingly, it lacks the excitement of the previous installments, and the plot revolving around taking pills in the nick of the time is rather laughable for a franchise so grounded in reality. Unless this is simply a test-run for the new series and we've yet to see what the writers really have planned for Jeremy Renner's excellent portrayal of Aaron Cross, it's sadly clear that The Bourne Legacy should have left Bourne's legacy well enough alone. 

4/10

See it if you liked: Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011), The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011)