'The Bourne Legacy' - a franchise reborn!
While a little plodding at times, 'The Bourne Legacy' is a nice 'reboot' (sort of) of the widely popular and well done 'Bourne' franchise deftly executed by Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass. Director and screenwriter Tony Gilroy (who also wrote the original series) attempts to create a new mythology along the tag line of 'There was never just one'.
In the first three films, Matt Damon was Jason Bourne, a black hat CIA operative who was searching for his true identity. The tale was told clearly from beginning to end, so obviously the whole idea of another super agent that is searching for his true identity would not work. Gilroy weaves an often complicated tale explaining that the Treadstone program, which created Bourne, was just the tip of the iceberg; that in fact, there were many programs developing many different 'Bourne' like super soldiers. The set up of this is overly complicated and long; amazingly, Gilroy is able to wrap in most of the characters from the earlier films, potentially setting up future plots, but these sub plots got a little confusing, almost to the point of needing a scorecard to keep the information straight.
As it turns out, a sister program to Treadstone is called Outcome, a program designed to genetically alter soldiers by inducing a virus meant to increase strength and intelligence. When the program falls under scrutiny the director of the National Research Assasy Group (Edward Norton) decide to dismantle Outcome. This means all six Outcome agents in the field are to be terminated. While all of this back story and machinations are happening, Outcome agent Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) is in the Alaskan Yukon training; the military is sent to eliminate Cross and then the action begins. Evading assignation, Cross heads down to the lower 48 in search of the 'chems' (little green and blue pills designed to keep his strength and intelligence elevated) and possible answers as to why they are trying to kill him.
Cross locates and saves Dr Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz) who is the lone survivor from a shooting at the ultra secret Outcome lab she is assigned to. She is his only way to get more of the 'chems' he needs to keep going. What follows is the genre expected global chase so well done in the previous films. Here, in 'Legacy', it has all been done before and lacks the originality of the sequences of the first three films. Jeremy Renner is excellent as always and will fill Damons shoes quite nicely if they can just be a little more original in the next film. Weisz is also excellent, so I imagine the future of the franchise is in pretty good hands at the moment, and with a little tweaking, could surpass expectations.
The last 'Bourne' film came out a little more than 5 years ago, in watching the trilogy again, they still hold up as modern thriller classics. 'Legacy', I am sure, will do just fine to live up to the expectations, with a little tweaking. This 3 star effort is worth the trip to the theater, just pay a little closer attention, enjoy the actions sequences, and allow yourself to be set up for the inevitable sequels to follow!