How could they screw this one up?!

Rating: 5/10 (9 January 2013)

All of the ingredients for a stellar film were right there for the taking. Jeremy Renner, check. Rachel Weisz, check plus. Ed Norton, excellent. A built in audience due to the preceding 3 movies which are among the best action films made in recent history, yep, were all right here. So how could they forget to add in a story with the rest of the ingredients?
It starts out with much promise and slowly builds up suspense only to not at all deliver before the thing was over. The long and the short of it is that the agency has decided to kill off all agents connected to certain underground, covert government projects like Blackbriar. So they issue them a different drug than they're used to taking to maintain their sharp edge over most folks, and one by one they just stop living. I cant even say they die because that may imply something occurred around their deaths, but no, not even remotely. They just plain stop living. Renners character hasn't gotten the new meds yet so he lives, and the rest is just him trying to get his meds.
Yeah, thats it. Thats the whole thing.
The action scenes were typical of a Bourne film at least, and that is to say outstanding, edge of your seat, nail biting action that almost seems possible. If that was only teamed with, you know, a story too it could have been a great movie. But they didn't and it wasn't. If you're OK with that, you may very well enjoy the film just for its adrenaline injections but if you're expecting even a minimal story to tie them together, you will be disappointed.