The Bourne Legacy

Logline: An expansion of the universe from Robert Ludlum's novels, centered on a new hero whose stakes have been triggered by the events of the previous three films.

Cast: Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton

Directed by: Tony Gilroy

I chose this movie because I wanted to keep this week filled with recently released in theatre/on DVD films. I believe Thursday's article will be The Breakfast Club and Friday should be Dark Shadows if all goes as planned. I'm debating on doing something special for the week of September 10-14, maybe a genre centric or superhero themed type of thing. We'll see. I might hold out considering I still have newer movies to review. Anywhoo... The Bourne Legacy awaits my critique.

Summary

Aaron Cross is a soldier like Jason Bourne in the Treadstone Project. The film begins with him beating a training record by 2 whole days in which he had to travel from point A to B in the freezing cold region of Alaska. He means business. However, back home things aren't going too well for Treadstone. Due to Bourne exposing them to the public, things are in shambles. A man by the name of Eric Byer, an ex-Air Force colonel, is brought in to help the situation. He decides to eliminate all Outcome initiatives like Cross in attempt to wipe the slate clean. He fails, Cross lives. All should have been fine and dandy for our hero, but in order to live he needs certain chemicals, so this is the story of how he attempts to attain them.

Review

For an action movie there wasn't enough things happening. I don't need to have constant explosions, fights, car chases, etc. I actually don't even care much for them unless they're done just right - somewhere between realistic and holy ____!!! A lot of The Bourne Legacy is spent with people babbling on about their problems and the story staying as stagnant as it possibly could.

I talked yesterday in my review about stakes and how it's bad to keep the level of stakes the same throughout the entire film. It really makes the movie seem like it's dragging along without much change. Unfortunately this entry into the Bourne series suffers in one of the most essential components to story structure, just like Snow White and the Huntsman did. Aaron Cross needs to get those pills. If he doesn't he will no longer be able to live. The woman he saves, Dr. Marta Shearing, can actually viral him off - but this doesn't change or raise the intensity of the situation. The stakes are fine, they're maybe just set way too high from the get go.

What's weird though is, with such high stakes from the early stages of the film, you'd think the first act would be intriguing. It isn't. Nothing really happens for 30 minutes. You know that Aaron Cross has been in this cabin (his point B destination) and anyone who has shown any bit of interest in this movie has seen the trailer for it. You know they blow the cabin up, you know Cross is not inside of it as the missile zooms past him. Everyone was waiting for that first turning point to come and yet, it didn't come for 30 minutes. It was actually 30 minutes on the dot that the missile zooms past Cross. Before this event, the film is padded with unnecessary excessive fat.

To add another con to this list - the characters were bland as ever. Aaron Cross had 1 thing going for him. He was the fastest of Treadstone's kind to make it through a training session. That makes him pretty bad ass, but at the same time, who really cares? He climbed mountains, made a fire, etc. What else do we know about him? It wasn't even made into a mystery like The Bourne Identity was. The whole time you're discovering more and more about Bourne and it keeps it interesting and exciting on top of all the other things happening. That's why I thought this movie was set to fail from the beginning. Jason Bourne was set up so well, there's no way they could duplicate the same formula without feeling repetitive. For a movie like this, that's the best way it could have been done, but they couldn't do it again.

The only positive thing I have to say is that the wolf scene was pretty sweet & so was the motorcycle chase at the end (not the whole chase, just some).

Topic of the Day

Like yesterday's review, I absolutely hate it when movies take 25-30 minutes to dive into their story. It's an absolute movie killer. If a movie is going to take that long to really start picking up the action, it better have a damn good reason to. I gave GoodFellas and City of God high praise two weeks ago for doing so. Both movies actually give a glimpse into the past and show the audience where the characters are coming from. The Bourne Legacy takes 30 minutes to do something that could have been done in 15. A lot of filmmakers out there are pushing for that 2 hour mark. It seems to be the normal finish line now. They must think that when people pay $10 to see their movie that it best be long enough to be worth the price. In reality, I hate that assumption. I'd much rather watch a 1h and 25min movie that charms, scares, thrills, or makes me laugh through the use of good storytelling, than watch a bloated 2h and 15min movie that floats around with padded dialogue to make something "worth my while". I'm trying to make sense of why filmmakers do this, and that's the only thing I can think of. This is two movies in a row that I've reviewed, so it's really frustrating.

Consensus

The Bourne Legacy is a snooze fest. Being the fourth addition into the collection of Bourne films, the bar was already set really high. With the introduction of a new character, the movie suffers due to the constraints set by the film's predecessors. Jason Bourne was a carefully crafted character that used the formula of keeping his identity a mystery; I felt that this was the only way an introduction to a main character in this series could be done. If they did the same with Aaron Cross, it wouldn't have felt repetitive, and therefore the movie couldn't have a satisfying protag. The pacing is ridiculously slow, the action is "been there done that" and the only thing I could think about during most of this movie was what I was going to be doing after it finished. Definitely not worth the watch, can't call it mediocre, but I can't call it absolute trash either because it was decently acted and there were some alright scenes.

I hate that I ended it on a good note with that line. Just know I'd never recommend this movie to anyone.

3.4/10