Actors, especially Renner, make this decent enough to see once.

Rating: 6/10 (3 September 2013)

Just watched it. What to say? It's a bit of a mess. Perhaps I'm just dumber than your average person, but the script was more complicated than the plot itself was. The storytelling, editing, everything should've been simplified. The movie would've been more effective that way. I always liked the first Bourne movie of the previous trilogy the most. It didn't try to be smarter than it was, it already had a solid foundation. Pacing was great and the lack of shaky-cam was a blessing. This one feels like the last two films of said trilogy.
Here, we have Jeremy Renner giving a great performance in a mediocre movie. Every time he's on the screen he steals it scene by scene. Rachel Weisz is decent, and one of my favorites Edward Norton is seriously underused and eventually wasted in this movie. Nobody gives a bad performance. Actors make this one worth your while.
The basic plot isn't bad. It's good enough. Gilroy took a lot out of it with his pacing, which doesn't work for me. I didn't get too invested emotionally - which was exactly the case in the last two Bourne movies too. This story is not as complicated as it's made out to be, so why choose this approach?
Gilroy just repeated the pacing and storytelling methods of the last two Bournes (which he also wrote but didn't direct). Using the same style makes sense since the happenings of those movies occur in "real time" parallel to this story all the time. I appreciate the effort, but it just doesn't work. If anything, this story should've been presented in a more simple and personal manner.
Gilroy not only copied the style from the previous Bourne movies, but REPEATED almost all of the 3rd act from those last two Bourne films. That was unnecessary, tedious and didn't work well. You get running on the roofs, eye-raping chase scenes with a thousand quick cuts that hurt your brain while you try to comprehend the big picture visually, a token counter-assassin, shaking cameras and narrow urban streets. The 3rd act was where I gave up on this movie. They did not have to repeat the two previous Bourne movies, especially like this. Tiring, useless and very disappointing. Especially when this had all the potential to be a very solid movie. The basic plot was there, characters were there, excellent actors were there.
That said, there are some good scenes in this movie. Especially one taking place in Weisz's character's workplace and another in her house. Every scene that makes Renner's characters deeper is also good and exciting. Some fights are not that bad for a PG13-film. I hate shaky-cam action more often than not, but not counting the 3rd act, it didn't bother me that much. Definitely not as much as in "Bourne supremacy" which is a very, very hard film to watch. I have a huge problem with Paul Greengrass' directing and camera work in that one. About that PG13..these are not kids' movies. These need to be R-rated, seriously, even though it wouldn't have made this film a masterpiece.
I hate it when I see a movie that's decent, but could've been so much better. Like with "Looper", this movie had all the elements to be a really exciting film, but someone (Gilroy) lost the ball. Renner's character should've been the abslolute centerpiece of this movie, now he's just...another piece. A big piece, but still just a piece. He carried this movie, and more emotional investment to him would've been a good idea.
But hey, if you haven't watched it, and you like Jeremy Renner, at least he will not disappoint you even if the movie does.