Bourne- Lite

Rating: 4/10 (1 September 2012)

It's been a disappointing summer for the blockbusters. Unfortunately The Bourne Legacy is no exception.
Legacy attempts to pick up from where the excellent Bourne Ultimatum left us, beginning with the end scene of Jason Bourne floating in the water, and attempts, as the Bourne Ultimatum did, to interweave a couple of scenes from the previous movie, Bourne Supremacy, to tie the plot strings altogether. Unfortunately the attempt is less successful here.
As the story unfolds it appears there is more Theadstone type projects running. The events of Ultimatum leads Eric Byer, head of some of these operations, to shut down the remaining ones. And when we say shut down, we mean killing all agents and anyone who has been involved in the projects. Jeremy Renner plays Aaron Cross, one of the Bourne-type agents, training in Alaska. All agents but Cross is wiped out, and he attempts to find out why. Also he is dependent on pills. Rachel Weisz plays a doctor in one of the labs where Cross has been "tested" and given his pills. He's no more of one of them. So Cross locates her, who herself is the survivor of her workmates being exterminated, and they head to Manila to get more pills.
Sounds boring and convoluted? That's because it is. This is Bourne-lite. To me it seems to have been an attempt by people who just aren't as talented as Paul Grenngrass and Matt Damon to re-create a Bourne movie, and they just can't cut the mustard.
Tom Gilroys' directing is solid enough, with some shaky hand held camera work for those Bournesque action scenes, which are few and far between. The pace, especially for a Bourne movie, is slow. Where's the tension? I was on the edge of my seat for the Waterloo scene in the Bourne Ultimatum. There is a lot of plot, which is at best, head-scratching. We had to look up on the internet why he was taking the pills, it was never really confirmed in the movie. And it's not a movie about who Aaron Cross is, it becomes about him tracking down the pills he needs. Even the characters explanations, when they come, don't end up really being explanations. Who again is Ed Nortons' character? Huh?
And unfortunately Jeremy Renner is no Matt Damon. There's just no personality in his Aaron Cross, and no mystery about him. You never make any connection with the character. Ed Norton seems to stick out like a sore thumb, it left me and my fellow viewer wondering what made this picky actor choose to be a part of this. Rachel Weisz plays her part with some depth, but it's all very predictable, we know what's coming. Kudos to the locations team on the movie, the locations and some shots of the movie is spectacular, especially the locations set at beginning.
I never thought the idea of doing another Bourne movie without Greengrass and Damon would work, and I was proved right. Easily the weakest Bourne movie.