Movie of the Week: The Bourne Legacy

[jacey]

August has been a thin month at the cinema and we've had two weeks which yielded no watchable movies, but this week The Bourne Legacy looked like a good bet and indeed it was. It's a Bourne movie (without Bourne himself) working on the premise that 'there was never just one.' So here we have the second generation of super-spies, physically and mentally enhanced by doses of regular meds.

But the repercussions from the events at the end of the the third Bourne movie are still being felt in Washington. Jason Bourne is on the loose. Out there. Somewhere. The high-ups are running scared and decide that their best option is to burn the programme to the ground and retain the data for a fresh start once the dust has settled, making the enhanced operatives and the research and medical staff surplus to requirements in a fatal kind of way.

And the rest is a roller-coaster ride as agent Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) goes on the lam with Dr Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz). Renner makes a good showing after being eclipsed by the stellar cast of Avengers Assemble (in which he played the under-used Hawkeye). I'd go so far as to say that if the Bond role came vacant I'd vote for him.

The only downside is an overlong car chase. When will directors of action movies realise that enough is enough already? Yes, it's a car chase, we get it. It's about someone trying to get away from someone else and there are thrills, spills and excitement... and more thrills, spills and excitement... and more thrills, spills and excitement... and... Yeah, right. Stop making me dizzy and Get On With The Plot!

Even with the car chase it's still highly recommended.

Comments

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

We don't often go to the cinema, but we saw Bourne Legacy last week. It was fun, though I agree with you about the lengthy chase. However, it was good to see the old fruit stall/fruit cart cliche is alive and well. :)

I really didn't get the point of trapping the wolf though. It would have made complete sense if it had run off and the bad guys had wasted hours trailing it in the wrong direction, but the missile took it out seconds later. Perhaps Aaron was trying to kill two birds with one stone missile, but it would have been much easier to just shoot the wolf, drop the electronic gizmo into the snow and run like hell.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I assumed he was trying for the option of letting the bad guys trail the wolf in the wrong direction, but cut it a bit too fine. It would have been doubly awkward if the wolf had not been scared off and continued to attack him. Oops!

Killing the wolf would only work if the bad guys located it while there was still a heat signature.

Maybe he needed to give them a moving target in a warm body.