A worthy follow-up to the original Bourne trilogy

Rating: 7/10 (30 December 2012)

Seemingly a cash-in to keep a popular series alive, The Bourne Legacy turned out quite a bit better than I expected it to be. Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton) is a good choice to take the reins, and it connects well with the series' ongoing story. It's kind of a side thing rather than a true sequel. Jeremy Renner plays another super-soldier from the Treadstone program. After Jason Bourne's attempt at escaping his handlers, the Treadstone program is hastily canceled by the government, which basically means that their super-soldiers are to be terminated. Renner is the only survivor of that group. He's now out of the special drug the government gives him to keep him going, and he goes after Rachel Weisz, a doctor who has frequently worked with him in the past. Weisz was also targeted by the government, since she knows too much, and she and Renner escape together, fleeing to Manilla to search for the drugs. Meanwhile, a team at the CIA (including Edward Norton, Stacy Keach and others) are trying to find them and take them out. There are some particularly chilling sequences, most notably Zeljko Ivanek's freakout, which might prove hard to watch after recent gun violence in the United States, but that also makes it even more horrifying. The action sequences are just as well done as the previous movies (those who hated the Greengrass Bourne movies will be happy to know that Gilroy drops the shaky cam almost entirely - it's still hand-held, but barely noticeable). The film does get bogged down in some of the talkier sequences, which often seem to be filled with a bunch of techno-babble, but when it moves, man, it moves. Renner is a fine lead, and Weisz is very good, too.