The Bourne Legacy
2012
**½
Director: Tony Gilroy
Cast: Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton, Stacy Keach, Dennis Boutsikaris, Oscar Isaac, Louis Ozawa Changchien
Operations Treadstone and Blackbriar are exposed and Jason Bourne is out of the picture, although the timeframe here overlaps with The Bourne Ultimatum (2007). Now the operation is titled Outcome, and it aims to develop chemically enhanced super agents. When the project becomes compromised, CIA decides to kill all its assets. One of them, Aaron Cross, outsmarts the agency, escapes, and teams up with an Outcome biochemist. Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass have left the franchise, Jeremy Renner takes the starring role, Tony Gilroy is promoted from a screenwriter to a director, but the fourth part offers more of the same, again. The plot is needlessly complicated and very slow to draw me in. The oveplotting seems particularly futile when it leads to the same old series of fight and chase scenes as the hero attempts and fails to remain below the radar. The film is way too long, but it ends somewhat abruptly.
