The Bourne Legacy Movie Review

The Bourne Legacy offers a clue that there is a transition in the works, as this latest film in the popular Bourne series moves on from the character of Jason Bourne, and introduces us to another similar operative. Because as it turns out, there are/were a whole lot of guys (and ladies) like Bourne. This film runs concurrent with the end ofThe Bourne Ultimatum as the Treadstone project is quickly unraveling, and the stealth parties behind it quickly try to bury both that project and all the others like it. And yes, there were other projects.
Enter Alex Cross. Cross (Jeremy Renner) is a Bourne-like agent who gets caught in the middle of the government's attempt to extinguish all  agents like him. After narrowly escaping elimination and trying to uncover answers about what's going on, he teams up with Marta (Rachel Weisz), a medical lead the government had assigned to his program; she is also on the run. It turns out that medicine is incredibly important to Alex's agent strain, as it both keeps him in a heightened physical and mental state, and also regularly expires; something that keeps him dependent on the program for re-up doses. And so it's now the two of them against the world and they're running out of time. Cue action.

The challenge of this film is that it has to incorporate old story lines while launching new ones. Jason Bourne must be referenced but quickly discarded to make way for Alex Cross, so we end up with a lot of cross-exposition. And that's the main thing that weighs this movie down.There are a ton of behind-the-scenes government meetings where all the higher-ups sit around and talk ad nauseum about how to save their hides, catch others up on why everything's going to hell, and why we must - simply must - bring these agents down now! And when we finally get back to scenes with Alex and Marta, they spend half their time talking about the need to get his drugs and the medical explanations behind what they do.

 It's a whole lot of talking that severely slows the pace of the film. The writers came up with a good idea, and some very Bourne-ish plot twists, but in the execution of it, everything seems to get caught up in committee as we sit around and watch people sitting around.