The Bourne Legacy

1.5/4

Starring: Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton, Stacey Keach, Donna Murphy

Rated PG-13 for Violence and Action Sequences

Call me crazy, but I was never the biggest fan of the Bourne series.  They seemed like grimmer, wannabe "Bond" movies.  I love espionage thrillers and action movies, but the films did nothing for me.  Apparently I'm the only one, since the franchise is hugely profitable.  That, by the way, is the reason this film exists.  The series has made nearly a billion dollars, although like most action movies, the majority has been made overseas.  Universal desperately wants to keep this franchise going, but since the novels ended with "The Bourne Ultimatum," Universal was at a loss for what to do.  The studio decided on making a parallel movie of its own invention, intending to use the same name for a different character.  I suppose this could work, but the movie is terrible.  It's better, albeit marginally, than "Total Recall" (albeit marginally) this years other big budget waste of time, but sadly it's 20 minutes longer.

After the disaster with Jason Bourne, the CIA is forced to take drastic measures with The Program.  That means eliminating all the agents and starting over.  One by one, the agents are given poison pills and dying.  The last agent, Aaron Cross (Renner), has slipped through their fingers.  Desperate to eliminate him, the CIA pulls out all the stops, but Cross is too smart and too fast.  Also in need of elimination are the scientists whose research has served as the foundation of The Program.  All are eliminated in what is made to look like a random office shooting, except Dr. Marta Shearing (Weisz).  Now she and Cross must go on the run.

For the first hour, the film makes little sense.  They're short scenes with various plotlines that are meant to set up the plot.  The problem is that they're not very interesting, and by the time the actual plot gets moving, I ceased to care.  Blame director Tony Gilroy, who co-wrote the script with his brother Dan.  It's bland, and Gilroy's direction, which is fast paced, fails to liven things up because there's really nothing there.

I first took notice of Jeremy Renner when he played the psychotic loose cannon Brian Gamble in 2003's "SWAT," which was based on the television series.  It took him another five years to hit it big when he scored an Oscar nomination for "The Hurt Locker" (which was overrated).  Now he is able to headline a movie by himself.  Renner is talented enough to carry a movie, but frankly, this is a waste of his considerable talent.  Ditto for Rachel Weisz, who also deserves better.  Weisz sleepwalks through her role to pick up a hefty paycheck.  It's hard to blame her, since the material is so flat.  Edward Norton does what he can to play the hardass behind the scenes, but like the other cast members, there's not much that can be done.

There's a scene in the film that I found somewhat distasteful.  When one of Marta's co-workers is secretly ordered to eliminate all his co-workers, it's disturbingly reminiscent of other recent massacres.  While Gilroy has the decency not to exploit it, do we really need to see this?  Isn't there another way that this could have been handled?

Gilroy is a terrific screenwriter, who took part in writing the previous Bourne movies (he adapted "The Bourne Supremacy" by himself, but the others were with written in conjunction with other screenwriters).  His skills do not extend to filmmaking however.  His approach is clinical, and he fails to get his actors to attract the attention of the audience, despite working with some of Hollywood's best talent.  He keeps the pace up (the second half of the movie is essentially one long chase sequence), but since there's no reason to care, it's all sound and fury signifying nothing (apologies to Will Shakespeare).

I'm about to write off big budget action movies.  Few filmmakers are allowed to use three dimensional characters and complex plots (James Cameron and Christopher Nolan come to mind) since that risks alienating foreign audiences.  Without those, the movies are usually dull.  Here's to hoping that someone somewhere is going to be able to merge visual effects with compelling characters and stories.

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