Time running out for Bourne
The Bourne Legacy (12A) Rating:**
The latest movie in the ‘Bourne’ series serves up some slickly- executed action scenes, and a capable central performance from Jeremy Renner, but is shot-through with a slight whiff of desperation as it attempts to keep the franchise alive.
Taking place after the events of the previous film, The Bourne Legacy shifts focus from studly beefcake Jason Bourne to the equally studly Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner), a fellow participant in the sinister ‘Treadstone’ program. After the program was exposed in The Bourne Ultimatum, the US government decides to eradicate all traces of its existence by murdering its scientists and test-subjects. Fleeing the resulting purge, Cross teams up with Rachel Weisz in an attempt to outwit the Feds.
All of this makes for a good chase movie (and there are plenty of these), but what distinguished the Bourne franchise (especially under director Paul Greengrass) was a degree of imagination in the plotting and pacing that raised the series above the average. Despite his best efforts, new director Tony Gilroy never quite settles into the quick-witted mindset of the earlier movies, and his story fails to evolve beyond a formulaic cat-and-mouse game between Cross and the authorities.
In previous instalments too, the ‘authorities’ in question (although often outwitted and humiliated by Bourne) at least gave the impression of being powerful and threatening. The Bourne Legacy’s bad-guys, by contrast, seem barely competent. Edward Norton (chief bad-guy) spends much of his time in a dimly-lit control room, issuing orders by telephone and running elaborate-looking satellite traces. The real legwork is done by a succession of almost comically inept policemen and security guards, most of whom are gleefully dispatched in a matter of moments. There is a certain degree of threat in the third act, when Louis Ozawa Changchien turns up, playing a high-powered ‘Treadstone’ prototype, but otherwise the film is an oddly tension-free affair.
The Bourne Legacy will probably please long-standing fans of the series, with a sequence of well- choreographed action set-pieces delivering the requisite thrills. Jeremy Renner is also convincing in the central role, perhaps cementing his place as the intelligent film-goers action hero. Overall, however, the movie feels like a last attempt to squeeze capital from what has been a lucrative and influential franchise. With some half-hearted directing and a sub-standard plot (marred, it must be said, by some pretty baffling attempts to preserve continuity with the previous films), The Bourne Legacy feels like the swansong for a series that is probably due for retirement.