The Bourne Legacy

A Bourne movie without Bourne. How does that work exactly? Imagine if they made a movie about one of the other rebel pilots who was doing his own thing while Luke, Han and Leia were on Endor. That’s sort of the way it works here. While Bourne is harassing the CIA, the other agents connected to his program are being wiped out. However our new hero, Alex Cross (Jeremy Renner), gets wise and escapes termination.

The movie starts off with some sloppy editing as it tries to piece together Cross’s storyline with bits from The Bourne Ultimatum. However, the inter-cutting between the two is choppy and does not flow well at all. However, once the main plot with Cross gets moving, the editing starts to get more professional.

The action scenes in this movie are quite good, aside from a motorcycle chase which simply goes on for too long. There’s some neat stuff with some wolves at the beginning and a cool rescue scene in a farm house. The action scenes are smart and calculated rather than just having punches thrown and gunshots fired. Which is what we expect from a Bourne movie.

Its evident that The Bourne Legacy doesn’t have quite the technical directorial skill as the previous three, but it does manage to contain the same spirit. The plot is pretty straight-forward, moves at a good pace, and keeps the audience gripped. There’s not a whole lot of resolution with the government agency behind everything at the end, but I guess they need to leave things open for a possible continuation of this branch of the series.

A strong effort, especially for the 4th film in a series, and one with an entirely new main character at that.
8/10