Brief: Universal attempts to inject a fresh dose of life into the Bourne Franchise, by ditching the titular character and introducing more shadow government figures who are in charge or even more highly trained and seemingly expendable covert operations units. Jeremy Renner is front and center as Aaron Cross, but how well does he hold up in the shadow of Jason Bourne?
The Bourne Legacy starts out during the events of Ultimatum, with the scene's frequently flashing to moments seen in the previous film, jumping from London the New York in Legacies opening act. It tries to set a tone and establish its new G-man, Eric Byer (Edward Norton). Bourne (only seen in pictures) and Pam Landy's actions in the earlier films, exposing Treadstone and Blackbrier to the public, leaves a trail leading to Outcome, a group of pill popping super agents who are placed all over the globe, but still have time to come in every 3 months or so to have blood tests run by men and women in lab coats.
According to Byer, they'll need to burn they're assets, so the Outcome agents will need to be disposed of, so the logical thing to do is A) Poison they're popper pills, or B) Send a missile from a drone to blow them up. Both are good options, so let's do both? Aaron cross, out in the freezing wilderness, is delivered with the missile option, that he narowly avoids, and instantly suspects his handlers of trying to knock him off, and sets about faking his death and find away to get more medication from the kinda hot scientist lady, Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz).
Legacy is much more of a backroom thriller then the other films, It is all about dealing with the fallout of Bourne's actions, and they do an alright job of it. But alot of what happens feels too much like they're reacting to what Cross is doing, an hours after the fact that the film doesn't feel like it makes much progress in the story. There's actually some interesting idea's put forth to progress the series, and you could see the direction they're hoping to take the story to possibly bring Bourne back to his own franchise here, but the setup they're going with doesn't really give much of a reason to bring Cross back into the fold for future films. He's not a terribly charismatic character, he's blunt, to the point, and he knows who he is. It doesn't have that progression that Bourne did, and they seemingly work out the one interesting detail about Cross is resolved in the film. And its the only real resolution in the film.
Nortons Byer is a man dealing with other peoples mess, He's very professional, but not given all that much to do. He gets angry as people, and talks others around. He does well, and Norton's believable in the roll, but he's the behinds the scene's man and it never feels like he and his people are a threat to cross. The other performers do alright, but there's never anything special here.
All up, Legacy is a interesting but missed step in the franchise. It doesn't seem to know what it wants to be, more then a extension of the series. It could progress further, but honestly, having sat in the 2 and a half hour film, i'm not sure i really cared either way for any of them. Also of annoyance, the score is nowhere near as catchy as the ones from the earlier films, with no real kick or heart.
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