An Unnecessary Deep Track for this Franchise

Rating: 5/10 (16 August 2016)

I'll start by saying that I almost gave this movie 6/10 when I first watched it, but then I went to see the new film, "Jason Bourne" which is out in theaters just now before penning this review. Having seen the latter, I bumped this movie down to 5/10 stars. Read on for why.
If you're not familiar with the Bourne movies, Matt Damon plays the lead character in the first three movies plus the latest, the aforementioned fifth film in the franchise. This movie, "The Bourne Legacy" is the fourth in the series, and does not star Damon at all. Instead it stars Jeremy Renner ("The Hurt Locker"; Hawkeye in "Marvel's The Avengers") who plays the role of a trainee for the same covert CIA black ops super-soldier type of program that Damon's character had evidently gone through prior to the beginning of the series. The movie is not a prequel, as it tells its tale after the events of the "Bourne Ultimatum" (and in fact the first half of the movie is told in conjunction with that movie). Still, the whole concept of the film is to provide insight into the behind the scenes happenings that led to the Bourne black ops program.
That said, while the movie is okay, what it winds up being is a "deep track" so to speak--it's the equivalent of a B-side song from a popular band's latest album. It's not bad, but it's just not what you want to see from the franchise.
The film does go into a fair bit of detail to explain the background of Treadstone and BlackBriar, the twin CIA programs that the previous movies revolve around. But while the plot is fairly engaging, it gets so deep into that back story that it winds up really only being of interest if you're a huge fan of all things Bourne and want to see the movie not so much as a standalone treat but as a film made especially for you as a Bourne aficionado.
None of this is to say that Jeremy Renner doesn't do a great job in the role he was asked to play for this movie. The problem is not the acting nor the action element of the film. Rather, it's that the film is just too marketed to the geekiest of Bourne fans for it to maintain its own appeal.
Furthermore, there is one scene in the film that caused me to not like the movie. That scene is basically a mass shooting scene--a workplace mass shooting at that--that plays out on screen for much longer than it should, and goes into much more detail than it should. The scene seemed to last a good five minutes, and I felt like I was watching a torture porn movie--and one that was basically made to appeal to people who think mass shootings are cool. That whole entire scene could have been condensed into a brief cut that would have communicated the same message and kept the plot the same without the grotesque use of this very particular type of overt gun violence. Take that scene out and this movie goes up to at least 6/10 stars.
As for what I noted above about the latest movie, "Jason Bourne", I thought that maybe the events of this film might be brought up in it in some way. The franchise is huge on stringing together its various plot strings into a cohesive narrative. But to my surprise, "The Bourne Legacy" doesn't figure prominently in the new movie whatsoever. There's a tiny Easter egg moment where the code names for the programs used in "Legacy" show up on a computer screen in "Jason Bourne", but other than that there's nothing at all. That said, this movie is a completely unnecessary chapter in the franchise history--a deep track that is alright to listen to for die hard fans, but not one of the greatest hits.
For all of the above reasons, I'm going with 5/10 stars for this movie. I can't really say that it's a "bad" movie, but it also falls flat of being a good movie as well.