It's not the same ultra-high-caliber
espionage thriller without Matt Damon sprinting around the globe or masterful
director Paul Greengrass in charge, but The Bourne Legacy (* * * out of four,
rated PG-13, opens Friday nationwide) is a brisk and challenging film.
Where 2007's The Bourne Ultimatum kicked
off with a dazzle that never let up, Bourne Legacy starts slowly and takes a
while to connect the dots. But once the story takes off, it's viscerally
engaging, anchored by strong performances, with Jeremy Renner as a capable heir
apparent.
The title may seem misleading, since Bourne
is only talked about here. He's supposedly spotted in New York by the powers
that be, but not by the audience. The story, which expands upon the clandestine
world of trained killers, is triggered by events from the previous films.
Renner plays Aaron Cross, a slick super-spy
and Iraq War vet. Though he doesn't have as much charisma or nuance as Damon
did, he projects a steely intensity juxtaposed with moments of vulnerability
that make his character appealing.
But we get only droplets of his back story.
Director Tony Gilroy, co-writer of the three previous Bourne films, knows this
universe — created by novelist Robert Ludlum— backward and forward and should
have further fleshed out Cross' character.
Legacy spins off where Ultimatum left off.
When last we saw Bourne, he and Agent Pam Landy (Joan Allen) exposed the top-secret
Treadstone government project.
The film kicks off amid a CIA frenzy.
Nefarious top brass such as Col. Eric Byer (Ed Norton) seek to minimize further
exposure of their dark plans by shutting down the elite spy programs formed to
create assassins. The agents at risk this time are in a related Defense
Department program called Operation Outcome, and their numbers include Cross.
He is being groomed as an enhanced spy,
daily ingesting "chems" that boost his intelligence, endurance and
resistance to pain. When we first see him, he's alone in a remote corner of
Alaska. Then the action switches back to Washington, over to Asia and the
Middle East, and ping-pongs headily between shady high-level CIA bureaucrats
and operatives around the world.
The dense tale can be hard to follow for
the first half-hour, until a disturbing shooting takes place in a lab where
Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz) is a doctor assigned to monitor Outcome field
agents.
Single-handedly fending off drones sent to
kill him as well as wolves, Cross makes it from Alaska to Shearing's home in
Maryland in a desperate search for meds.
Weisz is a smart addition to the
Bourne-sphere. An actress who conveys an astute intellect, she seems as
convincing spouting medical jargon as she does pulling off action stunts.
Though there definitely is suspense, the
movie suffers from moments of lethargy and lacks the explosive urgency of
previous installments.
This latest Bourne doesn't send adrenaline
surging the way Ultimatum did, but it's still a tense, well-acted thrill ride.
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