Bourne Legacy

The Bourne Legacy

Rating 7 out of 10

I was never a big fan of the Bourne movies with Matt Damon.  I like Damon enough and felt he did a good job.  I just never felt the story was that great or believable and mostly the stupid shaky cam the director used.  Drove me nuts!  I am glad to say the new Bourne movie shy's away from most of the shaky cam.

The trio of Bourne movies either ran it's course or Matt Damon decided to move on.  This movie actually has very little to do with Bourne and just milks the name.  It does milk the name fairly well.  It seems Jason Bourne's success in averting the government agencies that were looking for him causes a domino effect in closing down all the other secret programs in progress.  Those evil CIA people along with another group so secret I can't remember the name has come up with a drug that turns spies into SUPER spies.  They think better, jump higher, shoot straighter, ect.  When they shut this program down it means killing all of these super spies to hide all the evidence.

This is where Aaron Cross comes in.  He is harder to kill than the others.  In the hands of a lesser actor this could have been a campy rip off movie.  Jeremy Renner does an exceptional job as the super spy.  He makes the movie.  When Cross realizes he has been targeted he goes on the search for the little blue pill.  Not THAT blue pill.  The one that he has to take every 24 hours to keep up his super strength.  That leads him to Dr Marta Shearing played by the lovely Rachel Weisz. Dr. Shearing was to be eliminated too so she and Aaron Cross are off to the races with the really bad guys not far behind.

As I said Renner and Weisz are very good.  There are enough action scenes to satisfy the Bourne fans.  My problem is it becomes obvious when you leave the theater it isn't so much a movie with a beginning, middle and end as it is a reboot setting you up for the next Bourne movie.

I enjoyed it even though I didn't care for the ending.  Slightly better than rental only because of the good action scenes.

My daughter when I told her what I thought of the movie pointed out that I had not liked that many movies this year.  I said I noticed that too.  Luckily I haven't hated many either.  Plenty of movies like this one that I enjoyed watching but can't highly recommend to my friends.  I'll keep hoping...