Review of The Bourne Legacy (2012) by Rameshwar I — 20 Apr 2016

The first 20 minutes screenplay and acting in an attempt to be intriguing turns out to be rather pretentious, boring and cringe worthy. Only similarity I could find with the Bourne trilogy is the generous use of the words 'Jason Bourne', 'Treadstone' and the end credits soundtrack featuring 'Extreme Ways' but features none of the marquee elements such as the frenetic photography and editing, brutal hand-to-hand combat or the nail biting screenplay. The initial moments between Rachel Weisz and Jeremy Renner starts out to be exciting but ends up being generic and run-of-the-mill eventually.

Number 5 (Jeremy Renner) is an asset under training of a secretive superspy development program called 'Outcome' similar to 'Treadstone'. All the agents under training are dependent on physical and mental enhancement genetic cell alteration drugs that keep them together who undergo periodic full evaluation based on their blood samples. Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz) is a senior doctor in a facility that coordinates and research on the enhancement drugs. When an arbitrary incident triggers a paranoia in the top brass on a possibility of media exposure, Eric (Edward Norton) takes charge to suspend these operations which includes termination of all the agents and people associated with it systematically. Number 5 and Marta are survivors of different incidents and together goes off the grid.

Using Bourne as a context might add weight to box office opening but also increases the expectation level which is where this one fails miserably. Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz are no doubt competent actors, but after an initial burst of an intense scene together they become rather monotonous. Edward Norton as a star definitely adds weight but was missing as an actor. A similar theme has been done in many other movies, some done a lot better and convincingly - so this one hardly has a chance to standout. The bloated runtime, seen it before ending does not help either.

It made sure there cannot be further extension to the already elongated yarn.