The Bourne Legacy

LOVEFiLM Review The Bourne Legacy

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  By Darren Bignell from LOVEFiLM

  Tony Gilroy and Jeremy Renner bring a bar-raising dimension to the Bourne franchise.

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Most helpful review The Bourne Legacy

• For someone not familiar with the Bourne legacy, a great watch!

   

  By JafarIqbal (54 reviews) from London , 01 Sep 2012

  [Highly rated reviewer]

  Let’s just discuss legacies for a second. This whole Bourne thing has a massive legacy. Matt Damon is Bourne, apparently, nobody else could fill those shoes. They might be right, but I don’t know because I’ve only seen two thirds of the first one, that’s it. And frankly, I don’t care. But why am I telling you all this crap? I’m telling you because you need to know that I went to The Bourne Legacy with very little expectation; therefore, my review won’t be littered with complaints about how Legacy doesn’t live up to the last three movies. Sorry.
  
  But before I get into it, let’s do that age-old summary of the movie. If I’m correct, Legacy and Ultimatum happen at more or less the same time. When the media find out about these super –soldiers the Americans have been creating, the CIA decide to kill the remaining agents. One of those agents is Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner), who won’t give up without a fight. With doctor Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz), Cross travels across the world to save his life. It turns into a cat-and-mouse game, Cross and Shearing getting chased by Eric Byer (Edward Norton) who wants to kill both of them so he can remove all evidence of the super-soldier project.
  
  Is this film as good as the first three films? I have no clue. I will say this though; the first three would have to be cinematic masterpieces for this to be seen as inferior, because Legacy is a really enjoyable movie. It’s constantly moving, stopping only briefly at points for a quick breather before jumping in again. You’re always at the edge of your seat. The action is frenetic but believable; everything is rooted in reality and I never felt like something was too ridiculous. We are taught to believe that Cross is essentially superhuman, so any seemingly extraordinary feats make sense.
  
  And let’s talk about Cross for a second. Played by Jeremy Renner, obviously, who is bloody fantastic. An excellent performance. Since Hurt Locker, he’s not really done many good roles, frankly. Side parts in Mission Impossible and Avengers Assemble are a highlight, which isn’t saying much. Here, though, he burdens the movie and does a very good job of it. The character is very different from what I remember of Jason Bourne; there is an underlying sarcasm and cynicism in everything he does, which is a refreshing quirk. Without a doubt, Cross (thanks to Renner) is more than credible as the Bourne substitute.
  
  Oh yeah, the other guys. Rachel Weisz? Fantastic. Edward Norton? Fantastic. Both of them are awesome, anyway, I’ve more or less loved them in everything they’ve done, and they’re good here. Weisz’ transformation from hysterical to defiant is well-expressed and Norton is, well, Norton. That high-pitched nasal voice is still quite funny, but you can’t fault the performance. There are others too, who come in and out of the film, but the three leads steal the show.
  
  My only issue with the movie is that it’s bloody predictable. Just re-read my summary above again, and you can easily work out how the movie will end. I won’t give you a blatant spoiler, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out if Cross and Marta survive in the end. I just wish there was some sort of twist in the film, but it never comes. The film plays out exactly as you would expect it to, and that’s a downer. Nothing is truly unpredictable nowadays though, I guess. The beauty is in the execution. And the execution here is great.
  
  The best way to judge a movie like this is to ask yourself whether you’d want to see the inevitable next one. And I do. Jason Bourne has his legacy, and Aaron Cross could be cementing one of his own now too.

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