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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