Mr. Renner can carve yet another notch into his chain of triumphs propelling him toward well-deserved stardom

Rating: 7/10 (17 August 2012)

Half of the fiscal successes of The Bourne Legacy unquestionably will stem from the second word of its title. The other half—and the chief reason why I question why the filmmakers didn't save some licensing fees by having this be a stand-alone story—comes from the levelheaded casting of up-and-coming action star Jeremy Renner. Mr. Renner is one of the most promising and consistently pleasing of modern-day movie stars: kept in shape, is distinguished physically from other actors, and, most importantly, can act. He is very good here, too, in this spin-off from the three very entertaining Jason Bourne thrillers starring Matt Damon.
Mr. Damon is nowhere to be seen in this fourth film—the only exceptions being a head-and-shoulders photograph of him that appears on some government files and on a news broadcast just once in the picture. At the end of The Bourne Ultimatum, he swam off somewhere in waters of New York, destination unknown. The Bourne Legacy builds its premise from a question I asked many times during the last three Bourne movies: are there any others? "Others" being CIA-trained agents turning against the governments that trained them. Mr. Renner is one of those "others," who spends the first third of the picture performing feats that would make the guys from Survivor Man and Man vs. Wild seem tame. From out of this prologue grows a rather tricky and convoluted—to a fault—narrative involving a murder/suicide, a doctor (Rachel Weisz) pursued by government agents, and a lot of talk about viruses and chemicals.
I'm not sure if I could pass the Plot Elements Test. Yes, the movie's narrative is too complicated, and some key scenes hustled through too quickly, for me to pass it off as a piece of surefire storytelling. When it was all over, I was not quite sure about just what all that talk about acids and chemicals really meant and how it was truly integral to the plot. I know it had something to do with human experiments and such, and that's about it. But I hardly care, as the movie is too insistently gripping to deny.
Director Tony Gilroy, who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother, Dan, is not quite on the same action-directing level as people such as, say, Walter Hill or Paul Greengrass, who directed The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum. He's getting there. Considering as he's only directed three movies to date—and he's already showing great promise—this is easily overlookable. There are numerous action pieces in The Bourne Legacy; the early ones are a little sketchy; the later ones are borderline-brilliant. I would have been happier to see him film the fistfights with more elongated shots where you could see a little more than just a fist ramming into somebody's nose or a leg hooking around a torso before quickly cutting to something that looks almost identical. However, when filming a gunfight or a motorcycle chase through a Philippine city—when he does set his camera more than two feet from the sets and stunt doubles—Mr. Gilroy's instincts come into terrific effect. He's also got a great sense of how his camera should move during such sequences. One of the highlights is watching Mr. Renner (or Mr. Renner's stunt double) scale up the side of a building, follow him through an upper-story roof, into a hallway, and then shoot down a villain. It's the sort of shot Stanley Kubrick might have done had he been more of an action-director.
I've already complimented Mr. Renner. There are a number of worthy people who make small, but regrettably forgettable appearances between the action sets. People such as Scott Glenn, Edward Norton, Stacy Keach, Oscar Isaac, Joan Allen, David Strathairn, and Albert Finney. Then again, the two stars are Mr. Renner and Rachel Weisz, who as we would expect, plays first his hostage then his love interest. Despite the fact that they have little to do other than bicker, run through hallways, shout, and then ogle at each other with lovesick eyes, Mr. Renner and Miss Weisz do have some subtly pleasing chemistry. I also appreciate that Miss Weisz was allowed to spend most of the movie without wearing any makeup, as I seriously doubt a woman running for her life would really find it necessary to stop and put her face on between assassination attempts. Usually in a role like this, the leading lady has little function other than to look pretty. Miss Weisz is allowed to be an actress, not mere eye candy.
Jason Bourne is not going anywhere. Beforehand, I was a little questionable regarding the studio to produce more films in the absence of Matt Damon, Paul Greengrass, and Doug Liman. The Bourne Legacy lays my doubts to rest. And Mr. Renner can carve yet another notch into his chain of triumphs propelling him toward well-deserved stardom. This is an actor who deserves such a title. And I look forward to Tony Gilroy's future films.