The Bourne Legacy (2012)

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The Bourne franchise is under new management.  Jeremy Renner stars as Aaron Cross, and he does a commendable job of stepping into the shoes that Matt Damon so recently vacated.  And big shoes they were.  The previous three Bourne movies put identifiable human stakes into the action equation, along with a sense of palpable moral outrage, politics and high anxiety action—and he ran circles around the American intelligence community with his uncanny smart and swift response to every unexpected twist and turn in the plot.  He was an American hero who didn’t wreak random destruction, who didn’t simply light the fuse with a wisecrack and walk away but dug deep into the mystery of why there was a chip in his body and blood on his hands.

This is a brisk and confident action movie.  It is not intellectual in any way shape or form.  Here are the basics.  Cross starts off the movie in the Alaska wilderness, making his way through physical and animal perils to a lodge, only to have it blown to bits by a drone.  Why is he being attacked?  The story emerges involving yet another secret intelligence campaign, this one called Outcome, which has produced enhanced operatives — like Cross — as ingenious and lethally skilled as Bourne.  But he has to take his performance enhancing booster pills on a regular basis or risk losing all his enhanced powers.  He wants to find a way to keep the powers, the military wants to bury all evidence of the project, and therefore him, before it becomes public.  Edward Norton as Colonel Byer is an excellent cold hearted killer by proxy who represents the U.S. Government’s ‘best interests’.  And the race is on.  Renner is excellent in his role as the hunted, Norton as the hunter, and Rachel Weisz as the aid de camp, the scientist who can help Renner remain the man he has come to expect himself to be. 

Lots of chasing—the whole movie is one long chase scene—but I like the underlying message, that we need to keep our checks and balances on the government and they in turn need to do the job they have been charged with.  Congress has seemed to have lost its way in that arena of late.  The Borowitz Report—almost always able to make me laugh, no matter how grim the circumstances—said it best:

“The House of Representatives adjourned this evening after the legislative body collapsed from exhaustion brought on by hours of doing its job.  Hundreds of congressmen complained of headaches, dizzy spells, and extreme fatigue after putting in what sources called “a six, maybe seven-hour day.”

May they live the life that they hope to inflict on others.  The Bourne Legacy is a nice diversion from the shenanigans of Congress, and it reminds us to stay involved as citizens because our government, overpaid and bloated as it is, is not capable of being trusted to do their job.