The Bourne Legacy Review

The Bourne Legacy is an action movie with barely any action. Worse, the plot somehow manages to be both overly simplistic and needlessly complex. The first hour of the movie consists primarily of CIA agents staring at computer screens and recapping the events of The Bourne Ultimatum in a very clumsy fashion.

The movie also has the fatal flaw of a selfish, somewhat bland protagonist that the audience can hardly sympathize with. The central hero of the film, Aaron Cross, is played by Jeremy Renner. Renner has already proven himself to be a great screen presence in The Avengers, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and The Hurt Locker.

Renner doesn't give a bad performance, but unfortunately the script gives him very little to do. The previous three Bourne films successfully weaved together taut action and intelligent stories. The plot of The Bourne Legacy is so messy and incoherent that even the most attentive moviegoers will struggle to decipher what is going on for at least half of this movie.

The Bourne Legacy is overlong and clogged with exposition. The movie is content to throw countless technical terms at the audience without providing even the slightest hint of character development for any of the characters involved. This movie feels like a blatant cash grab. It dares to label itself as a Bourne adventure, yet it has no Bourne other than a recurring photo of Matt Damon.

Watching The Bourne Legacy, I felt as though I has watching two different movies. The first one was a very slowly paced spy drama with lots of CIA jargon and drawn out conversations. The other movie was a more traditional action movie with some running across rooftops, motorcycle chases and gunfire. It's a shame both movies sucked.

I am coming down so hard on this movie because it had so much potential to be greater than what it is. This movie boasts top-notch character actors like Edward Norton, Rachel Weisz and Zeljko Ivanek. Writer-director Tony Gilroy has made excellent movies in the past like Michael Clayton and State of Play.

The Bourne Legacy is actually not a terrible movie and it may entertain less demanding moviegoers who just want to watch some decent action. To be fair, once the action does get going it is well made. It is also worth mentioning that none of the acting in the movie is bad. It's just not worth your money or your time (135 minutes of it!) to sit through such a frankly dull movie.

I encourage people to watch the original Bourne movies that actually have plenty of exciting, tense action and, crucially, Jason Bourne.