With the seemingly never ending film industry hunger for more and more sequels on top of other sequels and prequels there was something of a sense of inevitability about a fourth Bourne film appearing on cinema screens at some point, the trilogy being so successful that sheer numbers would tempt either Universal film studio and/or a director or screenwriter to pursue a fourth film. Whilst a fourth was soon mooted after The Bourne Supremacy director Paul Greengrass dropped out with Matt Damon soon following, leaving a bit of a problem for any director or writer – how to carry on the series without it’s star or the plot threads that filled out his backstory for three films. Step forward Tony Gilroy and his brother Dan with an idea and script for a fourth film that whilst it followed on from Supremacy aimed to take the fourth and subsequent films off on a different tangent of government cover ups and secret operations and programmes and thus The Bourne Legacy has stepped forth to expand the world behind Jason Bourne.
Fans of the Jason Bourne books need not worry about spoilers being carried over from The Bourne Legacy novel as the film follows a completely different storyline from the book. The story picks up minutes before the closing events of The Bourne Ultimatum, with Jeremy Renner’s black ops operative Aaron Cross, a member of Operation Outcome, in the Alaskan wilderness on a training assignment. Operation Outcome in Legacy’s covert programme which concerns the enhancement of operatives mental and physical abilities through the taking of two pills or ‘chems’. Arriving at a remote cabin he meets another Outcome operative who informs Cross that he has broken the previous record for the mission by two days. With the exposure of the Blackbriar and Treadstone programmes, as seen at the end of Ultimatum, however things take a turn for the worst for both Cross and his fellow operative Number Three as Ed Norton’s Eric Byer embarks on an effort to cover up Operation Outcome which of course isn’t good news for the remaining operatives or those involved in the pill production side of the programme. Cue Renner on the run and on a collision course with those responsible for the attempted cover up as well as the forced team up with Rachel Weisz’s Marta Sheering, who Cross hopes can help find him a new source of chems with his own supply exhausted and production of the pills ground to a halt.
As much as it tries to be it’s own individual film and start it’s own series of films the problem with The Bourne Legacy is it’s hard to root for a character or feel sympathetic to his plight when it consists of spending the first half of the film desperately trying to acquire his next dose of pills, and as gamely as Renner tries he doesn’t really convince as the main action hero, which is due in part at least to the story which doesn’t give him much room for empathy or deeper character moments than those afforded to Matt Damon. Whereas Bourne had a fragmented history and it’s repercussions to deal with there is a lot less for the audience to engage with with Cross and his situation and the fallout from the shutdown of Operation Outcome and how it affects him or his ability to function as a human being. Not only that but the enhancement effects of the chems veer dangerously close to a super soldier storyline, something that seems out of place with the world previous created in the Bourne series, one that was grounded firmly in reality and a sense that Bourne’s story could easily be being played out in a centre or location nearby.
In terms of the other main leads Rachel Weisz offers game support though she isn’t really stretched or tested by her role as geneticist Marta Sheering, a female more conventional than Famke Potente’s Marie from the first two Bourne films, Ed Norton on the other hand seems a little wasted in his role as the former colonel brought in to take care of the fall out from the exposure of the Blackbriar and Treadstone initiatives revealed in the previous entries, confined to various office spaces alongside other shadowy figures involved in various conspiracies or shadowy government projects that are acknowledged briefly by codename, presumably dropped in for any future instalments.
This ties into one of the other issues with The Bourne Legacy, the government cover up/off the record projects and other hushed programmes don’t seem as clear cut or as interesting or potentially threatening as those in the previous Bourne entries, almost as if either the producers or Universal were hedging their bets with Legacy and dropped in a few hints about other covert ops going on at the same time that future sequels could call on incase the main thread of Legacy didn’t hit home with audiences. The action when it does happen is more reminiscent of the style of Doug Liman’s Identity than Paul Greengrass’ Supremacy and Ultimatum, and does lack some of the impact and threat felt in the confrontations that Jason Bourne had compared with those of Aaron Cross, save notably for a chase sequence that though not as bone crunching as the previous car chases is an engaging and very well helmed sequence.
Ultimately though Legacy does feel like a step-down from all three previous Bourne films – it frustrates as much as it promises, it would be getting into spoiler territory to say exactly how and where, and in numerous parts feels like a film that has been made for the sake of setting up further instalments without having the courage of it’s convictions to fully stand on it’s own from it’s predecessors. A large part of this is due to the situation Renner’s Aaron Cross finds himself in for the first part of the film making him something of an unsympathetic if not a more distant and less interesting central figure than Jason Bourne proved to be, with pill pursuit less of an interesting plot device than ongoing memory loss and the conundrums that presents in terms of the guilt and actions those memories have covered up.
With Bourne still at large in the series there is you feel a door opening to him returning in a future instalment but the immediate reaction to that is what would the point be, especially if it makes for a less enthralling or interesting fare as The Bourne Legacy does, or a film that seems uncertain of itself or it’s ability to stand alone by throwing out further possible diverging story lines as a safety net for future characters and writers to follow. It’s a film that could do with more story added to it rather than any more trimming to bring some more focus and depth to it’s particular part of the Bourne universe, and whilst there is nothing wrong with leaving an audience dangling for the next film it is helpful if they feel the film they’ve just watched has been worthwhile enough of their time to want to see any future sequel.
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