"The Bourne Legacy" continues the "Bourne" legacy
If you’re planning on going to see a movie continuing the story of Jason Bourne and Treadstone, then you’re out of luck, because honestly, this movie has little to do with the franchise, although it tries hard to tie itself in. If, however, you are hoping to see a film with excellent sequences of action and suspense, and a Bourne-esque quality film, then “The Bourne Legacy” is right up your alley. Although this film doesn’t follow the Bourne story, it has continued the legacy that the Bourne films began of being top-notch action films.
Instead of Jason Bourne, this film follows the story of Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner, The Avengers), an ex-soldier who has been drafted into a secret program designed to enhance participants’ senses and productivity. So in short, the program gives him pill to take that makes him faster, stronger, smarter, and more aware. After one of the agents involved in the Treadstone scandle releases videos and documents to the media, the agency begins to panic and shut down the program so as to not be discovered, and that involves killing everyone involved in the program. Well the problem with making super-human secret agents is that if you decide to turn on them, you’re pretty much screwed, which is the case for Colonel Eric Byer (Edward Norton, The Incredible Hulk). Try as he might, Cross always seems to be one step ahead of Byer, enlisting help from one of the agency’s research doctors, Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz, The Mummy), and so an intriguing game of cat and mouse ensues.
So aside from the title, this movie didn’t seem to have much of a connection to the other Bourne films, as I said before. They could have released it by itself with a different title and it wouldn’t have to change much. Of course the industry wanted to capitolize on the popularity of the Bourne films, so they gave it the trademark title and said “Jason Bourne” and “Treadstone” about a million times in the movie, which honestly didn’t have any effect on it at all other than making us get the point that Jason Bourne was somehwere out there in the same world as Aaron Cross.
This movie posed a lot of questions by the end. Is Aaron Cross the new Jason Bourne? Will we ever even see Bourne again? What happened to Treadstone? Although it seems that Renner has taken the torch from Matt Damon, that might not be the exact case. Nothing is set in stone yet, but there has been talk of making a sequel if this movie is responded to well, and there have been rumors going around that Matt Damon will actually be in it. We’ll just have to see. Either way, Damon or not, “The Bourne Legacy” is a good quality action flick.
“The Bourne Legacy” is rated PG-13 for violence and action sequences (explosions, gunplay, intense chase scenes, typical sequences for an action movie, nothing to be too surprised about).
Ben Asper