The Bourne Legacy

My Grade:  B-

Jason Bourne is back for The Bourne Legacy.  Hold up, actually he’s not.  Let me start over...

Aaron Cross is back for The Bourne Legacy.  That doesn’t sound right.  So, is Aaron Cross supposed to be Bourne’s legacy?  But Jason Bourne didn’t die at the end of The Bourne Ultimatum.  So how could he leave behind a legacy?  The strange thing is that I don’t actually miss Jason Bourne in this film because Jeremy Renner’s Aaron Cross is fantastic.  I do, however, miss Paul Greengrass (the director of the original Bourne trilogy) because Legacy, directed by Tony Gilroy (a writer on the original Bourne trilogy), is far inferior to the Greengrass directed films.

The main problem is that the premise is sort of sci-fi in nature.  The government has apparently been engineering stronger humans with a medicine that is never really explained.  Aaron Cross is one of these super-humans, if you will.  But the organization that has created these genetically superior humans now wants to destroy them all, and Aaron Cross decides to fight back.  It’s a bit more complicated than that, but that’s pretty much the gist of it.

One reason why the first three Bourne films were so good is that they were quasi-believable.  Yes, Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) did some things and got out of some situations that he probably shouldn’t have been able to do or get out of; but at least we were able to believe it because he hadn’t been genetically altered.  He was just highly trained and possibly brainwashed.  He didn’t have some sort of magic medicine that made him practically a superhero.

The other reason the first three Bourne films were so good, is that they focused on Jason Bourne and his identity crisis.  He spent most of those three films trying to figure out who he was and that is something that brings the story home for us emotionally.  On the surface, we see the chases and brutally epic fight scenes but then we really connect with Jason Bourne’s search for his true identity.  In Legacy, Aaron Cross’s main emotional objective is to stay super-human because he wasn’t very smart before he started in the program.  That seems a lot more selfish than trying to discover who you really are.

It’s not all bad, though, because (as I mentioned before) the Bourne films are packed with surface thrills.  Very good surface thrills that keep you on the edge of your seat.  This one is no different except for the fact that it doesn’t have as many fights, chases, shootouts, etc.  That was disappointing to me because the fights and chases are epic so I wanted more of them.  Legacy brings on a new Director of Photography (Robert Elswit) who has also worked on the other two features Tony Gilroy has directed (Michael Clayton, and Duplicity).  Elswit also shot MI4:  Ghost Protocol, The Town, Salt, and others... all of which have some very tight shootouts/fight scenes.  He is very good and he certainly doesn’t disappoint in Legacy. 

I would be remiss to not mention the final chase scene in Legacy.  It is pretty much epic.  Too long?  Probably.  But amazingly shot and edited?  Definitely.  Having done some editing myself, I am very amazed at how the final chase scene looks because there have to be over 600 cuts in about 15 minutes or so (just a guess).  AND I am impressed with Tony Gilroy’s ability to create something that complicated and make it look as good as it does in Legacy.

Also, the acting is very good all around.  I already mentioned Jeremy Renner being fantastic, but Legacy brings back some familiar faces from earlier Bourne films but also adds the beautiful and talented Rachel Wisz (Definitely Maybe, The Lovely Bones) and powerhouse Edward Norton.  Norton mostly stays in the office in Legacy, but his character holds some major power and Norton wields it with wonderful authoritative acting.  He owns the screen in his scenes just like his character owns the any room he is in.

Overall, The Bourne Legacy is lacking in a number of things including number of fight scenes, emotional depth, Paul Greengrass, and Jason Bourne.  Seeing as how the end of Legacy just screams, “We’re making a sequel,” I really hope that Matt Damon comes back with Jeremy Renner; Tony Gilroy steps back into only the role of writer; and Paul Greengrass takes back the directorial reins.  We will ‘cross’ our fingers (get it... like Aaron Cross... okay, I’m done).