Absolute Madness

Rating: 10/10 (10 December 2012)

I expected this newest entry into the Bourne story to be a total redundancy, instead I received a kick in the rear end, to my most happy surprise.
As this runs concurrently with some of the events in Bourne Ultimatum which in turn ran concurrently with certain events in Supremacy, we have an overlapping story. I credit Tony Gilroy with keeping a level of continuity, despite several years of Technical progress. The time frame is kept by not showing currently used Smart Phones and Computers, so if this film is in the same time frame as Supremacy and Ultimatum, we can believe it.
Rachel Weisz as Dr. Marta Shearing is not as cute as a button as she was in "The Mummy," she is a mature woman now, but still very acceptable, In fact I did not immediately recognize her. She's just a geneticist, working in a lab at work she likes to do. She does not know the extent of the work. When she gets into the story with "Aaron" she is confused, and does not understand the stakes. Not at all like Franka Potente, who was living on the edge before meeting Jason Bourne, Marta is just a scientist, but leave it to Renner to give her a crash course in evading bullets, on the fly WHILE evading bullets.
Jeremy Renner comes in to this film as a mountain man, a veritable "Liver Eatin' Johnson," and we see right away he has extraordinary ability. The first shot of the film mirrors the last shot of Jason Bourne getting away in Ultimatum. In fact, the theme of Water that is all through these films is clearly kept.
This is a new world of secrecy, where people can be made a target just by speaking one word or having knowledge of a particular sort. This is a world where even the agents involved do not speak to each other, are not supposed to know each other, and Jeremy's character is simply identified as "Number 5."
At a glance, Mr. Renner does not look like the kind of gentleman who is in the secret agent business, he appears to be more interested in eating Livers from "Crow Injuns" (Apologies for using the word) like Robert Redford in "Jeremiah Johnson." But after a failed attempt at blowing him up using smart drones, he makes an immediate appearance change as he steals a random airplane and flies away.
In the meantime, Rachel Weisz is almost killed by the great character actor Zeljko Ivanek ("In Bruges" and two "X-Files" among other appearances) when he goes mad by touching some blue muck in test tubes before offing himself. Rachel goes home and is apparently interviewed by FBI agents who are not what they appear to be - They are there to shut her up.
We don't have to know how Jeremy/Aaron Cross finds her, but he gets there just in time to prevent her assassination by these ghouls, after he offs them, he burns her house to the ground and they run away. Tony Gilroy depends on our knowledge of the previous films so that we don't really have to see how he tracks Rachel down, we know he can do it, and he does it.
As it turns out, Treadstone and Black-Briar were just small tips of the iceberg as far as CIA Black Ops are concerned, and Edward Norton as retired USAF Col Byer is shutting the USAF's agency down, which is called "Outcome" (I thought it was "Alt-Com") with Donna Murphy (Spider-man 3) in tow.
This movie is a feast of great character actors, but what makes this film stand out are some chase scenes that are so over the top of the previous Bourne films that those cannot even compare.
The complaint of this film is that the story seems to not make sense, but as I see it, it is not a finished story; I believe Tony Gilroy is expecting to make more of these, which he should, as we can see now that the story can be continued even without Matt Damon. So there is not really any resolution of the story. Basically it is "The Birth of a Super Soldier" - a New guy with even more ability than Jason Bourne, and a nemesis (Louis Ozawa Changchien as "LARX #3") who can just get up after being shot. Also, I read that this film depended on some "drug addiction" idea, but in fact it was not really drugs at all. but some complicated sounding genetics and virology, explained by Weisz. It sounded technical enough to be viable, and just enough of an issue to move the story along. The only suffrage is the "run-out-of-time" ending.
This film is way over the top. But Tony Gilroy actually did a great job Directing and Writing this chapter, and the cinematography is very good. If there is a sequel to this, I would be happy to see it.