The Bourne Legacy

Have you ever watched a trailer and thought, "Hey, that looks pretty good. I might have to check that out." And you do only to find out you saw all the best scenes in the trailer? Has that ever happened to you? I know it's happened to me more than I care to count but we can add one more movie to that old bait & switch list. The Bourne Legacy belongs on that list, BIG time. Why? Simple, the movie is a HUGE snooze fest up until the last fifteen to twenty minutes but you have to go through all this boring crap to get there. You know that motorcycle chase scene they flash in the trailer? It's at the end of the movie. You know that running on the roof segment and Jeremy Renner sliding down in between the buildings to beat up two unsuspecting cops who have Rachel Weisz cornered? Yep, you guessed it, it's at the end of the movie. Before they even introduce the most interesting character, and it's NOT Jeremy Renner's Aaron Cross character, the movie is pretty much over.

Directed by Tony Gilroy, the man who brought us the insipid Duplicity and the interesting but hollow Michael Clayton, brings us a movie that's a wannabe action film but is really more of a big brother/talkie film. It's chock full of talk inside stuffy offices with old white men and young white men (with the exclusion of the one Black four star general who makes an appearance). These old and young white men, who you aren't told who they are mind you, decide the fates of almost everybody involved. Just who IS Edward Norton's Retired Col. Edward Byer and how does he have so much damn power? There's bloated Stacy Keach and craggily Scott Glenn arguing the finer points of, what are they talking about again? Whatever it is, you get the feeling these men are fearing everything Jason Bourne has started and because of that, they have to shut down these covert Black-ops programs or the government will throw them all in jail. By shutting everything down, that means killing all the field agents.

Rachel Weisz looks completely out of place in this movie but maybe that's just my opinion. In ALL of the previous Bourne films there has never been a woman that could handle herself with any kind of fighting instinct and since Gilroy helped write the first three, it's pretty much par for the course that the female lead in this movie is much the same way. What you come to see in this movie is that ANYONE could have been the lead and it would have been a much more interesting move were the lead a FEMALE agent. Hmmmm, maybe I should write that. Anyway, back to this boring movie. Aaron Cross starts off in the wilderness, up in the mountains of god knows where, training for god knows what, the Iditarod maybe? While up there commiserating with fellow agent Oscar Isaacs (a completely wasted performance by the way) and while up there, surrounded by man hunting wolves, a directive has come down to shut down all programs and that includes Outcome Agents. Wouldn't you know it, BOTH men are Outcome agents. Remember that exploding house in the trailer?

Outcome agents are on a strict, regimented diet of blue and green pills and Cross is running out, so he hightails it back to civilization to get more "chems". The only one who can do this now, thanks to a mild mannered doctor turned psychopath and kills every one in his lab is Rachel Weisz's Dr. Marta Shearing. Once they get together the movie gets even MORE complicated. Something about viraling out of needing the blue and green pills. The only place that can happen is the Phillipines of course. And this is where are those cool scenes in the trailer show up but by then if you aren't asleep, you don't really care because you know what's coming. If they do a sequel of this film, to make up for this bland piece of film making, it better be non-stop action from start to finish. I can't even speak on the score by James Newton-Howard except to say it match the movie....YAWN!

Skip this puppy and wait for the sequel which if they take my advice, will keep you on the edge of your seat. I'll see you at the theater.