Friday, October 18, 2013

Movie Review: "The Bourne Legacy" (Tony Gilroy, 2012)

“BOURNE” WITHOUT BOURNE: A FRANCHISE SOLDIERS ON,
WITHOUT ITS GREATEST HERO by Bennett Campbell Ferguson


Left: Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz are "Bourne" fugitives
 
 
 
 
Who is Jason Bourne?  Once upon a time, that question was of paramount importance.  When Bourne (Matt Damon) awoke with no memory of his past in 2002’s “The Bourne Idenity,” a great physical and moral quest began.  Over the course of a super-charged trilogy, Bourne learned that he had once been a CIA assassin and tried to atone for his crimes.  He even went so far as to apologize to the daughter of his first target, even after being nearly beaten to death behind the wheel of a Moscow taxi.

In “The Bourne Ultimatum” (2007), Bourne’s quest for redemption ended when he exposed the illegal assassin program that trained him.  It felt like a perfect ending but apparently, someone at Universal Pictures disagreed.  Hence, the 2012 arrival of “The Bourne Legacy,” a film that acknowledges the events of the original trilogy while focusing on a new set of characters.

Chief among them is Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner), yet another secret government assassin.  But unlike Bourne, Cross doesn’t take arms against his former employers based on moral grounds—he does it because he has to.  Why?  Because he’s been cut off from a supply of “chem pills,” which he requires to survive.  Thus, the film becomes a race against time, as Cross searches for more pills while his superior officer, Rick Byer (Edward Norton), commits himself to his protégé’s demise.

On paper, this plot sounds like classic Bourne—after all, there’s a mystery, a countdown to doom, and even a beautiful love interest in Cross’s ally Doctor Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz, in a startlingly wooden performance).  But several key things have changed.  For one thing, the film was directed by Tony Gilroy, who worked as a writer on the previous films (adapting them from Robert Ludlum’s novels) but didn’t step into the director’s chair until “Legacy.”  And while Mr. Gilroy is obvious a skilled crafter of thrillers (he made the wonderful legal drama “Michael Clayton”), he hasn’t yet mastered the neatly speedy pacing that’s so crucial to the “Bourne” franchise.  Instead, he keeps the rhythm slow (at two-plus hours, this is the longest “Bourne” film yet), allowing us to clearly see much of the violence.  And in many scenes (particularly one where a doctor begins shooting his colleagues) this becomes problematic.  The onscreen cruelty is depicted with such clarity that it often becomes unbearable to watch.  I suppose one could laud Mr. Gilroy for his unflinching depiction of violence, but it drags the movie through a queasy gutter that’s at once nasty and bland.

There are deeper problems as well.  Mr. Renner gives a fine performance.  In addition to steely brutality, he displays a disarming affability which allows him to manipulate people without hurting them.  But Cross isn’t much of a character because unlike Bourne, he doesn’t have a fully developed conscience.  Even towards the film’s end when he declares his intent to cease being an assassin (by scrawling “no more” on a motel wall) you don’t fully understand how he came to that decision.  This cold-blooded killer appears to have jumped from one set of beliefs to another, and the film offers no clue as to how he made the leap.

At the end of the day, “The Bourne Legacy” is bad enough to make you wish the story had wrapped with “Ultimatum”; indeed, the complications of this film feel like a cynical attack on the earlier picture’s happy ending.  Yet there are moments when “Legacy” entertains.  In the third act, Cross and Shearing have to catch a plane to the Phillipines, and the sequence in which they board using forged passports and sit separately is both coherent and nail-biting.  It’s also followed by a snazzy motorcycle chase through Manila which, though overly clichéd, moves over stairs and between cars with such nimble force that it leaves you spellbound.

Perhaps the best part of this chase is the end.  Cross, shot and bleeding, mis-maneuvers his motorcycle, sending him and Shearing sliding flat across the ground.  Thanks to John Gilroy’s editing, we see every moment of the accident, so clearly that we feel as if we’re standing on the street and witnessing it ourselves.  Then, as Shearing begs an innocent bystander for help, you feel the weight of her weariness and vulnerability.  It is here that Tony Gilroy’s slower pacing doesn’t feel wrong because it allows for a beautiful moment of crisp humanity, making you glad that the “Bourne” world, though battered, remains alive.

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