The Bourne Legacy

A sidequel rather than a direct sequel, The Bourne Legacy succeeds in giving the kiss of life to a franchise that had a Do Not Resuscitate sign hanging over it. The series seemingly came to a natural conclusion with Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne finally discovering who he was and how he came to be fished out of the sea with no memory three years earlier. But there was a problem: that concluding chapter, The Bourne Ultimatum, made enormous piles of cash for studio Universal. Their franchise was still lucrative but had run out of narrative gas. Enter "series architect" Tony Gilroy, who has gone and greatly fleshed out the backstory behind the Treadstone program that created Bourne in order to allow for another agent to go on the run from a different set of people. What’s surprising is that The Bourne Legacy turns out to be a respectable thriller in its own right.

Set around the same time as Ultimatum (clips from which are interspersed early on) but in essence starting from scratch with a new cast, Legacy kicks off with another body floating in water; but instead of an injured amnesiac it is Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner), a different agent in the middle of a different version of the Treadstone training program. When Treadstone is made public the decision is taken by the shadowy chief of the program, Eric Byer (Edward Norton), to pull the plug and shut up shop, which inevitably means killing anyone who knew anything about it. This includes Cross, who manages to escape but is forced to head back to the lab where he receives the medication that makes the agents extremely dangerous. Along the way he meets scientist Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz), who is also targeted for execution, and together they set off for the only place where the “chems” can be found.



Having the Bourne name in the title proves to be a blessing and a curse. There are expectations to meet, both in terms of plot and action. Gilroy, promoted to the director’s chair while staying on script duties alongside brother Dan, has retained the globe-trotting adventure structure while sensibly avoiding Paul Greengrass' kinetic visual style from parts 2 and 3. His is a thriller that goes back to basics in some ways, running at a slightly slower tempo; by trimming back some of the action excesses that crept in to Ultimatum, Gilroy has actually done the series a favour. The hyper-editing that occasionally confused incomprehensibility for intensity has largely been retired. He brings a bit more polish to proceedings, perhaps unsurprisingly from the writer-director of Michael Clayton.

But in doing so, he's also lost a bit of the driving energy that established the series' reputation. The action on show isn't bad at all - Aaron’s escape early on, his initial run-in with Marta and the extended chase sequence in Indonesia are good stuff - but they can’t compete with the best set-pieces from its predecessors. Still, Renner gives it his best shot. He proved his leading man credentials with his breakout movie The Hurt Locker, and he cements that status here. Cross is neither as sympathetic nor mysterious as Bourne was, making him harder to root for (especially since the plot boils down to his attempts to get hold of some tablets); but Renner imbues him with a warmth that Damon seldom showed. Weisz is far too good an actress to be playing second fiddle as she does here, yet refuses to phone it in; lumbered with a good deal of exposition, she effortlessly makes it interesting. Norton’s bad guy military officer is strictly two-dimensional, while holdovers from earlier entries – Joan Allen, Scott Glenn, David Strathairn – appear so briefly you wonder why they bothered.

For a sequel that has no real reason to exist beyond the obvious financial motivation, The Bourne Legacy gets the job done. It’s a competent entry that doesn’t tarnish the Bourne brand and establishes a secure foundation for future efforts, with or without Damon’s involvement. But it doesn’t offer the fuel-injected thrills that audiences have come to expect, and the lead character just isn’t as compelling as Bourne. Next time give Cross something more interesting to do other than hunt for medication, and maybe the series has a future after all.

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