The Bourne Legacy is Smart, Fast, and Furious! In this latest follow-up to the Bourne trilogy, Jason (Matt Damon) is absent, though mentioned. It is because he is still at large — spotted in New York, though again eluding capture –, and because Pamela Landy (Joan Allen, who appears in a cameo) is talking about Treadstone to a Senate committee that the current crop of morally bankrupt, overly paranoid intelligence agency taskmasters (led by Edward Norton as Retired Col. Eric Byer, USAF) is in a panic, and the basis that sets the Bourne Legacy into motion.
Critics have been too quick to base the new film on the previous series, comparing the characters of Jason Bourne and Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) in manner and motivations.
Doing so completely misses the point of The Bourne Legacy: the writers were not trying to recreate Jason Bourne. These are two different characters from different government-sponsored black-op programs (Bourne, a product of Treadstone, and Cross, the product of Outcome), in different circumstances; Bourne leads us on an action-packed quest to regain his memory and discover why people are trying to kill him after he failed a mission; Cross is in a race to get his “Chems” before he loses his enhanced mental and physical abilities and is killed in an effort by the powers that be to shut down the program he is a part of.
The Bourne Legacy begins in back-and-forth sequence cuts: Cross in Alaska on a training mission, while the intelligence team overseeing the Outcome program systematically kills off the agents — and anyone else — associated with the program around the world, taking us from one international city to another.
As Cross evades efforts to kill him, and one of the scientists of the program loses his mind and shoots a room full of colleagues, one survives. Slowly, the dual stories converge as Cross arrives at the home of Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weitz) just in time to save her from the agency hit team, in a mutual effort of self-preservation (he needs her for his “chems,” and she needs him to survive).
In Bourne form, the action scenes were explosive, frantic, and suspenseful, without any throwaway scenes; there was no action just for the sake of an action scene to fill the moment.
While the Bourne Trilogy was great (I’m a huge fan), it shouldn’t shock fans that the Bourne Legacy is slightly different. Writers Tony and Dan Gilroy wrote a good story, and Tony Gilroy directed it well. They attempt —and succeed —to expand the original plot by laying the groundwork for a political and legal component in subsequent films, as Landy takes on the machine now out to destroy her credibility and brand her a traitor to the United States.
While Cross doesn’t evolve much throughout the film as Jason Bourne did, Dr. Shearing does in a way that Marie didn’t. She goes from an innocent victim with an edge to a can-do survivalist, best revealed when she fights back against a pursuing assassin during a motorcycle chase—the film’s best action scene. The writers have again provided unknown opportunities for her to emerge in subsequent episodes.
Afterward, I spoke with viewers; some said they preferred the previous Bourne films, while others were still unsure. No one outwardly expressed any dislike or disappointment. If you like high-action, fast-paced thrillers, The Bourne Legacy doesn’t disappoint; you just have to approach it as a new film, not a continuation of the original series. 4 Stars
