Action franchise is BOURNE again
Bourne Legacy a worthy successor
Why would anyone want to be a secret agent for the U.S. government? According to the Bourne movies, they train you to be a lethal, unstoppable assassin and then kill you for it. They tried it on Matt Damon in three Bourne films, and now they’re trying to do it to Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner), in the latest thriller-cum-expose of federal waste, The Bourne Legacy.
Damon had a pug-nosed all-American look that gave Jason Bourne a wholesome kind of mayhem. Renner is more of a bad boy, the kid at the back of the class who doesn’t do well in anything but metal shop. He’s Jughead to Damon’s Archie, and it gives The Bourne Legacy a slightly unfinished feel, as if Cross hasn’t yet grown into his role as someone worth killing.
The series — which is threatening to grow into James Bondian length — has been taken over by director Tony Gilroy, who wrote the first three films and has a deep understanding of how to turn a complex plot into a chaos of conspiracy and doubledealing. The Bourne Legacy tells a fairly straightforward story in a confusion of layers: it’s not quite as smart as it seems, but you have to be attentive, and that makes you feel like you’re part of something true.
The story picks up with Jason Bourne — a rogue agent from Treadstone, a project-gone-wrong — still on the run from the government that would kill him. Meanwhile, the super se- cret National Research Assay Corp. has come up with another project-bound-togo-wrong called Outcome. It involves giving chemicals to a group of soldiers to make them super-smart and super-strong, and there’s a lot of talk about “behaviour design” and “viral receptor mapping.”
There’s a subtext to this as well. In one of several sudden flashbacks, we see Cross as a somewhat sub-literate private before his infusion of chemicals. Without them, he’s back in the precincts of the low IQ , and as he says, “It’s a long way to fall.” It’s a tragedy in waiting.
Nevertheless, the government — in the manner of bureaucracies everywhere, perhaps in advance of the end of the fiscal year — has decided to knock off its Outcome agents. Cross, whom we meet training in Alaska — in reality, Kananaskis, where the film shot for a total of 14 days — swimming in cold water and dodging wolves and so on, is the only one who survives.
Also in danger is Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz), a scientist who’s in on the drug program. The scientists have to be killed as part of the coverup and that — along with their well matched physical appeal — makes Cross and Shearing natural allies.
It takes about half an hour to get all this established as the film hops from city to city, following various victims of the evil agency. It’s headed by Edward Norton, who’s so high up he can even destroy Joan Allen, who once seemed to be in charge. Allen is just one of several cameos from the earlier movies: we also see David Strathairn, an alarmingly bloated Albert Finney and even photos of Damon, who haunts this film like a ghost.
The Bourne Legacy is essentially a long chase, much of it by satellite, surveillance camera and computer in high-tech offices. Gilroy (Michael Clayton) has a facility for the fast talk of ruthless men: he cuts easily to the chase because the dialogue is the chase. Norton says he wants to hear about “anybody who talked to anybody about anything at any time,” and we know immediately that he’s not the guy to go to if you want to get your overtime approved.
Beyond all the talk, there are also a couple of kinetic set pieces, particularly a chase by foot and motorcycle through Manila. It doesn’t have the quick intelligence that director Paul Greengrass brought to the train station chase in The Bourne Ultimatum, where all the pieces clicked neatly into place, but it does have the benefit of being breathless. It even includes that hearty staple, the scene where someone crashes into a fruit stand. Unhappily, the vendor does not arrive to shake his fist at the departing vehicles.
The result is a watchable, if overlong, adventure that feeds on our suspicions about government spies — that it’s all a homicidal coverup and introduces a new action star in a series that shows no signs of ending.
Renner, a performer of wily intelligence, is also set to take over the Mission: Impossible films. He’d better not run out of smart pills.