I was excited to go to this movie. Not because it was well reviewed, but because I went with my daughter Annett and her friend Robyn on August 13th, Annett’s birthday. And, we went to the huge new complex at Thanksgiving Point that I didn’t even know existed (I live in a hole). Going in, I knew that Matt Damon as Jason Bourne was not in this movie. But, because I liked the first three Bourne movies (and watched them again whenever they were on TV), I was anxious to give it a try.
At the end of the third Bourne movie “Bourne Ultimatum” (2007), Deputy Director Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) faxed information to a superior exposing Operation Blackbriar and the Treadstone Project, both part of Jason Bourne’s previous escapades as a trained CIA assassin. We all thought that was the end of any more Bourne movies. However, CIA Director Ezra Kramer (Scott Glenn) who is being investigated calls in Eric Byer (Edward Norton), a retired USAF Colonel responsible for the CIA’s clandestine operations, for help in a cover-up of an additional illicit operation.
The beginning of “Bourne Legacy” finds Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) on a snowy mountain in Alaska where he is undergoing training as “number five” a member of Operation Outcome, a Department of Defense black ops program. He has been programmed with green pills to enhance physical abilities and blue pills to improve his mental processes. He arrives early at a cabin for rendezvous with another agent “number three” (Oscar Isaac) who is suspicious of him.
Meanwhile, Byer decides the only course of action is to eliminate all Operation Outcome “assets” meaning all of the participating members. Each ops member has been implanted with a tracking device. When he discovers both “three” and “five” are in the same place, he sends in an armed drone to the cabin in Alaska. Cross hears something and leaves the cabin just minutes before it explodes killing “number three.” He realizes his life is in danger and cuts out the tracking device from his abdomen and forces it down the throat of a wolf who is trying to kill him. A minute later the wolf is destroyed by another missile.
Then, (undisclosed to us) Bryer has chemically brainwashed a scientist in the research lab where the enhancing pills are made to kill all his colleagues and commit suicide. Only one person survives after the massacre, Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz). This part of the movie is quite fuzzy and hard to follow.
Bryer’s CIA agents are sent to the home of the traumatized Dr. Marta to kill her, but she is miraculously rescued by “number five” Aaron Cross who wants her to supply him with the enhancing pills. Marta tells Cross they have to go to Manila where the pills are made. Keeping one step ahead of Byer’s men, they get the pills in Manila and she helps him to “viral off” the dangerous pills. They have many close calls but finally escape after a 30-minute motorcycle chase during which I went to the bathroom twice (no more drinks at the movies for me!).
I hope this movie is not the Bourne Legacy. The script is poorly written and plot is so fragmented that it is almost incomprehensible. Edward Norton does not play the evil eliminator with any credibility. The character of Aaron Cross is nebulous—it’s hard to figure out who he is. Rachel Weisz is an excellent actor and does a good job with what she has to work with. Except for the camaraderie of my companions, this movie would have been a bust. Too bad.
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