The Bourne Legacy Adds Nothing New To The Legacy of Jason Bourne.

Rating: Null/10 (19 September 2013)

Lacking the stylistic visual flair, kinetic action, highly charged atmosphere, sense of urgency, hyperactive camera, cut-throat editing & almost everything that made The Bourne Trilogy an intensely entertaining ride of non-stop thrills, The Bourne Legacy is an uninspiring & unnecessary fourth chapter that's quite inferior to its predecessors and doesn't even have Jason Bourne in it.
Taking place concurrently with the events of The Bourne Ultimatum, the story of The Bourne Legacy concerns Aaron Cross; an assassin-in-training for CIA who goes on the run for his life after the clandestine exposure of their operations in previous movies forces the secret agency to shut down all active operations & terminate every associated member within it with immediate effect.
With Paul Greengrass not returning to direct, it's the screenwriter of The Bourne Trilogy who takes over the directional duties but completely forgets what made the previous films work as Tony Gilroy ends up taking too much time in setting up the premise which took away the spontaneity & urgency for which the Bourne series was known for. Gilroy does show capability as a director but he still has a long way to go.
Those who disliked Greengrass' frenetic shooting style in previous films might be able to sit through this one as camera movements are much more relaxed but then its story nevertheless remains a tedious affair & the lazy editing certainly doesn't help the cause. The action sequences are too less, drama is mostly dull & the film kind of overstays its welcome in the end but at least the climactic action sequence was cool, even if short-lived.
Coming to the performances, the cast mainly comprises of Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton with Renner playing Aaron Cross, at which he turned out to be quite brilliant. Both Weisz & Norton are certainly capable of delivering better performances than their contribution in this film. And to be honest, Matt Damon's Jason Bourne is severely missed in this one and only after watching this film can one estimate just how important Damon is to this franchise.
On an overall scale, The Bourne Legacy marks a massive drop in quality when compared to previous films and even though it doesn't add anything to the legacy of Jason Bourne, it fortunately doesn't end up tarnishing it too. Slow, convoluted & underwhelming, The Bourne Legacy is certainly not a sequel that fans of The Bourn Trilogy deserved. Worth skipping if you'd like to.