For those who haven’t recently watched The Bourne trilogy, it would be a bit of a leap to watch Tony Gilroy’s The Bourne Legacy. Aaron Cross (Jeremy Brenner—he’s no Matt Damon) has a parallel story to Bourne’s (who’s mentioned, but isn’t a character), fleeing assassination by his own bosses at the CIA. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz), a doctor responsible for tending to Cross and his ilk, joins him on the run. Weisz gets to be damsel-in-distress, but at least she also gets to save Renner as a biochemistry wiz. The Bourne Legacy is entertaining, but no match for its predecessors. It has a few continuity glitches and lapses in plot, requiring quick-fix solutions, some of which are unintentionally funny. The final action scene is claustrophobic and hard to follow, which leaves you a little bored for the movie’s penultimate scenes.
This article appears in Aug 9-15, 2012.