The Bourne Legacy

Review – The Bourne Legacy
By Jim Bryant

Back in 1984, George Lucas unveiled Indiana Jones’ latest outing in the form of his excursion to a certain doom-laden temple. Big on action, low on narrative, it was not well received at the time. The previous film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, had been an intelligent, well-plotted, well-scripted film with rounded characters; unsurprisingly, people were confused by the transformation into a big, dumb franchise film.

Unfortunately similar is The Bourne Legacy. After three superbly crafted thrillers Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne is (almost) retired to make way for Aaron Cross in the form of Jeremy Renner. Like the first film, we’re in rogue agent territory; one man against the system which is, of course, terrifyingly evil in their quest to do whatever is necessary to defeat the bad guys. No memory loss this time round. Here, we have drug addiction as the motivating force, leading us to terrific action sequences, a hint of romance and some good old racial stereotyping later on.

Let’s deal with what’s done well. As mentioned, the set pieces are as brilliant as ever. Jeremy Renner proves to be a worthy successor in the action stakes and continues the almost everyman look vs. surprising martial arts skill type thing we’re used to from these films. Rachel Weisz manages to be every bit as likeable as Franka Potente in Identity and there is some real chemistry between her and Renner. Throw in some beautiful cinematography and, on the surface, you have a good looking film that is by no means un-enjoyable.

There are, however, problems. As well as Jeremy Renner handles the script and no matter how intensely he plays Cross, he just isn’t as interesting a character as Jason Bourne. His motivation is vague and only barely woven into the narrative and the incredible speed that the film moves at makes everything seem a little too easy for him. At no point does an audience feel the same uncertainty about his fate that made Damon’s Bourne so watchable. In the same way, Edward Norton’s CIA operative suffers from a lack of development and remains one of the most clichéd military characters outside of a Jack Ryan movie. Surely we’re all getting a little tired of the ‘kill terrorists at any cost’ speech by now?

Then we get to the elephant in the room, and it’s an arse-kicking elephant that convincingly rebelled against the system in three previous outings. The lack of Jason Bourne is tangibly felt, not least because of the film-makers’ decision to mention him every five minutes. Part of the plot here takes place in the timeline of The Bourne Ultimatum and boy, do they milk it, almost trying to make a Bourne film using any trace of memory we have for the previous series. The intention is to link the two universes; the unfortunate effect is to remind us how good it could have been. And has been before now.

As Temple of Doom was the big, dumb Indiana Jones movie, so this is the big, dumb Bourne movie. Tony Gilroy’s direction does fit the style we’ve become accustomed to seeing in these films, but unfortunately it lacks so much of the substance. Its major crime is to introduce two potentially interesting characters and then put them in the middle of a far too basic action-thriller. We’ve seen it all before. When it ends (frustratingly badly) the audience is left with the feeling that they’ve been set up for a continuation in the franchise that two hours previously they had probably wanted to continue.

SUMMARY

Bourne without Bourne? It works in places and has all the right trademarks of what has come before, but you’ll be left scratching your head at how one of the best plotted film series of our time became so annoyingly straightforward.

I felt this was very poor. As stated above it lacks intensity and really appears to be a bunch of explosions, fights and stunts linked together with some rather iffy storylines.

The film itself could've been at least 30 mins shorter, the motorcycle chase is ridiculously long and unbelievable and throughout the film Aaron Cross makes decisions which don't make sense.

Renner is solid given what he has to play with, but this is not a patch on the Damon films. Unless you're absolutely convinced you want to know the next part of the storyline, avoid this - it's a sequel for a sequel's sake and serves no real purpose.

Like most American films they went over the top with action, explosions and chases. However I thought it was a good film and not a classic Bourne but not too bad.