Borrowing the title from the Eric van lustbarder novel of the same name, The Bourne legacy is the fourth instalment of Jason Bourne’s… Legacy. Jeremy Renner plays Aaron Cross, a black ops operative who needs some pills after a failed attempt by the government to kill him. Whilst on his mission, he comes across Rachael Weisz’s dr. Marta Shearing, a reluctant partner to help cross in his crusade.
The film begins with the aftermath of the Bourne ultimatum with the treadstone operation being exposed and due to this exposure, Edward Norton’s Eric byer is called in to eliminate existing agents by supplying them with a poison pill. The film opens the film with cross on a training mission in Alaska; which involves a lot of climbing and jumping. Eventually cross meets up with another agent in a cabin, and as a result of the treadstone exposure, the cabin is targeted by drones. Cross escapes but the other agent dies. This is the start of crosses journey.
I would like to begin by saying that the film isn’t accessible to new viewers. With Jeremy Renner recently giving a decent performance in the avengers and it becoming the third highest grossing movie of all time, he is Likely to have developed new fans that want to see what he does next. So when they see this, they will be thinking “what’s happening?”. Granted, the film is set in the same universe as the matt Damon films, but it isn’t a full sequel, it’s a spinoff, so knowledge of previous films shouldn’t be as important. With this and the amount of new characters that are introduced, we could be forgiven to think it would be more accessible.
The first half hour involves many people standing and talking, and sitting and talking, sometimes there’s no talking at all. I got that feeling where I didn’t know what was going on. Was this down to poor storytelling, or the film not grabbing my attention? Either way it is bad news for the movie.
This is a shame because the supporting cast is solid. Edward Norton gives an OK performance even with the limited material. Rachel Weisz isn’t like traditional action leading ladies. Instead of being in the film purely for eye candy, she gives a strong performance that is matched by Renners.
Just because I say the opening half hour is a bore, doesn’t mean that the film is completely devoid of any good moments, far from it. The fist fights, however brief they are, handled and filmed better by tony Gilroy than Paul greengrass. The Bourne Legacy has its moments, such as the parkour chase, but it takes a hell of a long time to get to these moments.
2/5