Director: Tony Gilroy
Genre: Action, Adventure, Thriller
Rating: C-
I think my biggest problem with The
Bourne Legacy was that it didn’t need to be made. The
Bourne Trilogy ended well – both book-wise and movie-wise. Robert Ludlum wrote three Bourne novels, concluded the series,
wrote a number of other books, then died.
Then in what has the appearance of being a case of greed and laziness
the Ludlum estate gave permission to Eric Van Lustbader in order to write more Bourne novels. The ending that had wrapped the trilogy up
was shattered and Van Lustbader to this day is popping out a Bourne a year. As someone who enjoys writing and creating
characters this rather bothers me – I don’t particularly like the idea of
continuing someone’s work posthumously.
It’s one thing in the case of Robert Jordan, where he made arrangements
for it to happen prior to his death and wrote down how the story was supposed
to end so that someone could continue The
Wheel of Time series. It’s another
thing if the author ended the series, died some time later, and then someone
decided to resurrect his books.
Okay, so now that that rant is out of my system, let’s move on to the
movie itself. Continuing the theme of The
Bourne Legacy didn’t need to be made, or at least didn’t need to be a Bourne film, is the fact that it doesn’t
actually involve the titular Jason Bourne – at least not really. In my opinion plans for the film should have
been axed once Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon announced that they would not be
involved in the film. Despite being set
in the same universe an being based around another member of the Treadstone
Project Legacy has a really different
feel to it and in my opinion could have easily been based in a similar but
different world. In fact, I think it would
have been better off had they taken that route.
The events in Legacy are
initiated by Jason Bourne (Damon, seen only via a photograph) exposing
Operation Blackbriar and the Treadstone Project, leading to an investigation of
CIA Deputy Director Pamela Landy (Allen) and Operation Blackbriar supervisor
Noah Vosen (David Strathairn). Upon
learning of this, the CIA calls in Eric Byer (Norton) to deal with the
situation and make it go away – which he does by eliminating all members of
Operation Outcome, which I think was another aspect of Blackbriar and
Treadstone. This elimination is a
problem for Aaron Cross, codename “Number Five,” who would rather not be
killed. He goes on the run, but he’s
disabled by his dependency on pills the agency has given him to enhance his physical
and mental capabilities – greens and blues.
Conveniently for him, the CIA is also attempting to kill all of its
Outcome scientists, leaving Dr. Marta Shearing (Weisz) pretty much dependant on
him for her continued survival.
So, just to start, this series does not need the Bourne
connection. The premise can exist really
easily without the Bourne connection
and would have been better off having severed it. The few actors who were in both movies aren’t
utilized properly – but then few of the actors in this movie are utilized
properly at all. The characters are, for
the most part, flat and dull. They fit
stereotypical roles and are never given any real reason to expand. I was particularly disappointed with Norton,
who basically just stood around and barked orders. Renner and Weisz bring a lot to the show and
really stand out simply because they make the most out of their flat characters
and try to add some depth. I don’t know
what’s motivating any of the CIA type agents, beyond the fact that bad guys are
bad guys. I only know that the good guys
are motivated by the hey, let’s stay alive mentality of things – I’m not really
given any reason to root for them beyond the idea that I should be rooting for
people to stay alive. There are a few
good moments and I actually really liked Weisz’ role in the chase scene. Her role was, in my opinion, the only perfect
element about both this movie in general and the chase specifically.
With that one perfect moment behind us, let’s discuss the other failures of the movie. The chase scene where Weisz was awesome was, in my opinion, poorly done. There were elements that I loved about it – namely the fact that the police weren’t shooting at the fleeing protagonists, which is something that I always hate in action movies (if you’re fleeing from the police in a crowded area, they’re not going to shoot. The chances of hitting one of the many innocent bystanders is too great). The music was lame and rather redundant, which I guess kind of made it fitting for the sequence itself, which was also rather redundant. There were a few good action sequences overall, but none that was worth the cost of admission. Really, when it came down to it this was an unremarkable addition to the series. Oh, and the ending sucked. I'm not going to explain why, because that would be a massive spoiler, but it was a let down. I'd say skip this movie and hold out for The Expendables 2.
