Review of The Bourne Legacy (2012) by Gary N — 09 Jun 2013

What could possibly go wrong? You have a blueprint of success from a great Robert Ludlum character-an amnesiac assassin- turned into an increasingly brilliant trilogy of films-& then inject fresh blood into it to take it in new directions. However, losing Matt Damon Is just one of the key problems. Losing Paul Greengrass is another.

The best element is the first hour-lots of intel agency bods getting concerned about the Treadstone project fallout and some of the film running side by side with the last films events. Jeremy Renner doing some survivalist training in the wilds of Alaska to show his abilities-such a fighting wolves and shooting down drone fighters. But it's all a deception, a fake veneer of gobbledegook-as logic quickly hails a cab and when asked "Where too Gov?", quickly replies "I don't know-just keep driving!".

If you know the trilogy's story of Operation Treadstone, then keeping the cock up out of the public/press domain makes sense. Following that failure-shut up shop and tie up.

Loose ends and let Bourne go now he has sorted out the lies and deception. This new entry tries to sell the idea that a newer, better assassin training programme complete with drug assisted guinea pig killers could be usurped and discovered because of CIA Opearative Pamela Landy's appearance at a impending senate committee hearing. Cue public outrage! Political scandal, etc.

So Edward Norton's Mr Fix-it says "burn the programme down completely" and eradicate traces of the new programmes by killing all the operatives-not too mention the doctors treating them.

Landy knows nothing about these new ops anyway, so why bother? Concerned further house keeping will find out the truth? Wouldn't it be easier to just kill her then?! No-lets slaughter everyone else.

Added to this, Renner has no discernible character and is even quite a nice guy when you get to know him-as Ms Weitz does. Sadly the whole thing is a hollow shadow exercise without a substantive reason for being made other than as part of the usual greedy financial gravy train.

Ironically, the action is a little sparse, not as well choreographed as previous instalments and the assassin showdown denouement ends up firing blanks. Given the "logic" of the CIA trying to do a damage limitation exercise, i.e. Operation one failed, so lets kill off Operatives from phase 2 by using operatives of phase 3?! The term "can of worms" springs to mind.