The Bourne Legacy

I know all of the posters tell you the movie stars Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz, but they really should promote it as The Bourne Legacy starring Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz and a photo of Matt Damon We Will Show Every 5 Minutes To Make You Feel Like Matt Damon Is In The Movie. By Oscar rules, this photograph might appear in enough of the movie to qualify for a Best Supporting Actor nomination.

Renner stars as Aaron Cross - a super soldier created in the same program as Jason Bourne. As we learned in The Bourne Identity, Bourne has vowed to expose everything, so those shadowy figures at the top of national security in the USA, Admiral Turso (Stacy Keach) and Colonel Byer (Edward Norton), are scrambling to kill off every agent created in the mold and with the abilities of Jason Bourne.

Cross has been capable of avoiding these efforts to eradicate him, but he must find the meds necessary to maintain his special skills and knowledge, so he joins forces with a scientist, Dr. Marta Shearing, who can lead him to what he needs (I hope he pops those pills like Popeye eats his spinach, and we get to see his forearms expand).

Will Cross get the meds to save himself?

Is he fighting forces too big for him to defeat?

Will you ever forgive them for making a Bourne movie without Bourne?

When the movie was first announced about a year and a half ago, I said you can't have a Bourne movie without the guy who plays Bourne. His name is in the title! Even without him, his name is in the title! I was right, even though I wanted to be wrong. Renner is a great actor and action hero, but he doesn't have enough material to make the movie memorable.

Director/co-writer Tony Gilroy and co-writer/brother Dan Gilroy give us a chase movie with no soul, details or complication to excite the mind. Last week, I know I said it was great to have a Total Recall movie missing all of those types of things, but I feel like my expectations and hopes for a Bourne movie were much higher. That's the price you pay for previous success and setting the bar high.

The Bourne Legacy has the framework to be something better, but becomes a movie in search of details. It could be a taught thriller about the spy game and military industrial complex, but doesn't want to get that complicated, and mostly muddles all of that. Turso and Byer just run around making exclamations about all of the trouble this Bourne guy is causing, but never get beyond the teeth gnashing to dive into the intricacies a program like this would entail.

We get brief glimpses of Cross's past and how he became part of this, but not enough to care about him. Cross should be a much more sympathetic character, but the basic facts don't encompass enough to genuinely evoke those sentiments from the audience. Same for Dr. Shearing.

Worst of all, The Bourne Legacy is a series of scenes all drawn out to lengths the script can't support. Every scene feels too long for no good reason. Eventually, The Gilroys give up and just start tossing any old idea at the screen with hopes it will stick, but they only cause the audience to laugh at the silliness The Bourne Legacy devolves into.

The Bourne Legacy took the polish off the legacy like when Michael Jordan played for The Washington Wizards, or Brett Farve went for one more season with the Vikings.

The Bourne Legacy is rated PG-13 for violence and action sequences.