Review: The Bourne Legacy

The Bourne Legacy is an odd film. It's not quite a sequel. It's not quite a reboot. Frankly, I'm not quite sure that it was a film that really needed to be made. Cynical audience members will probably say that this film is an obvious cash grab. Bourne fans starved for another entry might welcome it with open arms, excited at expanding the "universe" of Jason Bourne. How do I feel? Read on and see.

The Plot
The Bourne Legacy occurs in the same time frame as The Bourne Ultimatum. While Damon's Bourne is going through his shenanigans in New York, the eventual end of the Treadstone project that went bad starting in The Bourne Identity, other similar programs are being shutdown for their ties to Treadstone. One such project is Outcome, one step further than Treadstone in that these agents are also genetically enhanced. The drawback? Each agent is dependent on pills to keep their enhancements. That's right. Drug addicted assassin/agents. How very Phillip K. Dick. One such agent is Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner). When all the Outcome agents are liquidated (i.e. murdered), he survives. Desperate for his meds, he ends up saving a scientist, Dr. Shearing (Rachel Weisz) from her own liquidation. With the government hot on their heels, they journey to Manila, to the main factory of the meds to change Cross' future.

What Worked

1. Cinematography - Gilroy chooses to film Legacy as Liman did in Identity. That is to say in a traditional style without a lot of fast cutting. It is in sharp contrast to the documentary, shaky-cam that Greengrass used in the last 2 Bourne films. Not only is the film less nausea-inducing but one can appreciate the action much better as it is easy to follow and always shot in complimentary angles. Which leads us to...
2. The Action - the scenes are very well choreographed, particularly the climactic motorcycle chase at the end of the film which rivals the chase from The Bourne Identity. Also very good are scenes in which Cross escapes his liquidation and in which he saves Shearing from hers. Each one showcases his enhanced skills and ability to out-think his opponents, even when thinking on his feet.

What Did Not Work

1. The Action - while I loved the action scenes themselves, there were simply not enough of them. The 3 I mention above are pretty much all there are, save for a small scene at the factory. I don't mind dramas. I don't mind character development. However, when I go to an action movie, particularly one from the Bourne Series, I expect a delicate balance between drama and action and unfortunately, this film fell short in this area. In the other films, Bourne had interactions with various government agents, police, and assassins. There aren't too many of those types of scenes in this film. As a result, there is a lot of downtime in the film which slows down the pace.
2. The Characters - one of the reasons why the Bourne series worked so well is that Bourne was a very sympathetic character. He drove the narrative. You went along his journey as he tried to discover who he was and what Treadstone was. This is not the case in Cross. He knows who he is. Someone is out to kill him but he doesn't really seem to care. His driving force is meds to keep his abilities. That's it. His journey is very selfish, much more than Bourne's search for self. Unfortunately, that is not enough to sustain an entire narrative. Also, for some reason, Gilroy has made it a great point that Cross is the complete opposite of Bourne. He's very congenial. He's talkative. He smiles. The problem with this? It doesn't jive with his drug addiction. It also undermins his believability as a deadly assassin. Lastly, there is zero chemistry between Renner and Weisz. Thus the flirting and the "romance" that carries the later half of the film comes up flat and seems awkward at best.
3. The Story - this film has a completely unnecessary story. It doesn't add anything to the Bourne series. Instead, it just blatantly says, "Hey, we've got ANOTHER program like Treadstone and ANOTHER agent goes rogue." It's a complete rehash without any of the mystery or the depth. It's all very straightforward. We have yet another black ops style government program, this time with genetically enhanced agents. They shutdown the project and try to kill anyone tied to it. There are two survivors who have no idea why they are being tracked and seemingly don't care. Instead, they follow a plotline that has nothing to do with the other one going on. As a result, you get characters who don't drive the narrative. You get completely reactive characters that simply respond to the plot. There is no unifying driving force in the story which makes the film feel as if it is meandering, appearing instead to be a series of scenes and set pieces just strung together.

In Conclusion

I wanted to like The Bourne Legacy. I really did. I was hoping that it wasn't just a cash grab and that it would add to the mythology of the Bourne trilogy. Unfortunately, it does not. It doesn't reveal anything new about Treadstone or Blackbriar. It is literally a side-note. This wouldn't be so bad if the story itself was any good. Unfortunately, it isn't. It's almost as if someone took a list from the other Bourne films and created a template for this movie while completely missing what made the first 3 films work: great story and a good sympathetic, proactive protagonist. Is it a bad movie? Not really. It's just not as good as it could have been and nowhere as good as the Bourne trilogy. It's an action movie that doesn't have enough action to please action fans, and it is a spy film without enough intrigue to please spy film fans. I'm not quite sure who this movie was meant to appeal to. It certainly wasn't me.