Exciting and Renner is a Good Lead

Rating: 8/10 (12 August 2012)

The Bourne films are entertaining, having Damon as a lead lends depth to the mysterious agents. This time Jeremy Renner gives us a more visceral force, and though he's not Superman, he certainly demonstrates that his abilities are special.
In this entry Renner is facing extermination, and he is survival mode for most of the story. Mostly, he is on his own. For the second half of the story he teams up with Dr. Shearing (Weisz), one of the people behind the project who finds herself facing death because of her association to Cross and other agents.
There are some thrilling scenes in the film; some remind us of the tension in Alaska, a place where beauty and danger seem to exist harmoniously, and it doesn't hurt to have a computer-operated drone to raise the tension levels for a couple of the super soldiers.
We visit a few worldwide locations as Col Byer (Norton) expects a clean resolution to his orders. Norton matches Renner in the intensity scale, though his role is different as he represents authority and is ready to justify the means in order to achieve his goals. Everyone of his words drips with authority, arrogance, and there is no room for interpretation or argument.
The final part of the movie has some exciting chases in the heart of Manila, as we see Cross try to escape one very surprising, last-minute adversary, who might prove to be his match. It is in this part that the direction weakens a little because executing this type of scene must be very difficult. It is not bad at all, but there are moments when the editing falters a little bit, and that might weaken the overall effect of this confrontation. The best thing about the film is that it leaves us with a taste for more proving the fact that as long as there is charisma and talent involved, combined with a hero and a villain that are almost equal matches, we do care about what happens up in the screen.