Bourne Legacy

Just what exactly is Jason Bourne's "legacy," as the title of the movie suggests?  Perhaps it is the story of one man discovering what he is capable of against seemingly impossible odds.  The movie is an escape in many ways, but it is also a "legacy" project, an extension of the franchise that connects on many levels.  The chase scenes are motivated by a good script, and the audience is along for the ride emotionally as well as on a gut level.

Jeremy Renner's Aaron Cross is the hero of the movie, and he centers the action in a human frame that really is superhuman, but not without empathy or an emotional arc.  In some scenes, Aaron Cross is wounded and hunted, like Jason Bourne was, but in this case he is running from a ghost of himself, not running to find an identity.  He is a physical specimen, genetically enhanced, as shown in a superhuman ascent over Alaskan mountains in the opening scenes, but as he discovers through the course of the movie, his mental abilities have also been enhanced through genetic manipulation.  He remembers his former identity, but he doesn't want to retreat into his "low-IQ" status, and he needs every ounce of his mental capacity to escape with his life.  Even when he survives his wilderness experience at the beginning of the movie, he then arrives only at a remote cabin where he faces the prospect of being killed.  He runs not only to stay alive and to stay ahead of the people who would kill him, but also to escape the prison that would be his mind should he go "off-chems."  Like Jason Bourne, he is both a weapon and a victim, but unlike Bourne, Aaron Cross has no question that he is a weapon.  His only question is how to maintain his skills and survive.

There is a romantic interest in the movie, Dr. Marta Shearing, played by the lovely and convincing Rachel Weisz, who holds the key to Aaron Cross's survival -- the little green and blue pills that keep his skills from deteriorating (or so he thinks).  She enters the movie shortly before a horrific scene of workplace violence, which she survives through guts and determination.  The actress then pulls off an emotional encounter with a second group of assassins who greet her in the guise of grief counselors.  That scene and the action sequence that follows are probably the best scenes of the movie.

The conspiracy theories involving a shadowy government arm, even more secretive than the CIA, that uses gene therapy to produce super-assassins, rather than brainwashing, as in the previous movies, sometimes get lost in their own redundancy.  If it weren't for the scenes stitched in from the previous movies, it would be difficult to follow the bad guys' roles.  It seems there are layers upon layers of conspiracy in these movies -- each time the heroes expose an arm of the octopus, another tentacle reaches out from the ooze.  Still, I liked the verbal chase scenes where this shadowy conspiracy overrides concerns such as warrants and privacy to collect data they use to chase down Aaron Cross and Marta Shearing.

The plot of the movie is interesting, and the ending is satisfying.  Overall, top-grade entertainment.