A week ago I finally saw The Bourne Legacy, and for me, it was worth going to see! Mind you, I did have a free movie ticket so all I had to pay for was popcorn, but I think even if I had to pay, I wouldn't think it was a waste of my money.
Jeremy Renner...wow, what can I say about him? I could say alot, but I don't want to ramble on about how good-lookin' he is and how talented of an actor he is! So I'll just stick with those two things ;) haha...But I do want to add that I'm happy he has been in some major movies lately (Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, The Town, The Avengers, The Hurt Locker) and now this one! When I saw previews for The Bourne Legacy, it made me really excited to see him as Aaron Cross.
If you were hoping to see Matt Damon in this one, then I hope you weren't disappointed. His character's picture did make it in the movie in news scenes, and some of the events we follow Aaron Cross on overlap with what Jason Bourne was dealing with with Treadstone and Blackbriar and the London shooting of the journalist, but Jason Bourne never makes an appearance in any new scenes.
I thought the storyline was fresh, engaging, and fairly believable. Maybe more the previous 3 Bourne movies. (but I still love all of those movies!)
Aaron Cross is a member of Operation Outcome, a Department of Defense black ops program that enhances the physical and mental abilities of the field operative by the consuming of "green chems" and "blue chems". While he is in Alaska for a training assignment, he meets Number 3, an exiled Outcome operative.
During this, Treadstone and Blackbriar have been exposed, and one of the men involved gets help from Eric Byer to take care of the CIA's other secret operations. As in Operation Outcome. An order is issued to eliminate all those involved in Operation Outcome, and Aaron figures this out quickly when the cabin Number 3 lived in is blown up by an aircraft and then he is tracked by it until he destroys it.
But more aircrafts are on the way, so Aaron takes out the tracker embedded in his side and force feeds it to a wolf. So we all know what happens to the wolf....BOOM. And Byer thinks that Cross is dead.
Byer then brainwashes an Outcome scientist to kill the other scientists and then commit suicide, but one survives, Dr. Marta Shearing (played by Rachel Weisz.
Days after, Marta gets attacked by a CIA assassins in her home, but Cross shows up, rescues her, and convinces her to help him. He saw a news report on the shooting at the lab, and since Marta was the only survivor who knows how to make the "chems", he seeks her out, and just in the nick of time too!
Marta reveals that Cross doesn't need to keep taking the "green chems" because he was genetically modified to retain the physical benefits even without daily taking the "chems", a process called "viralling off", but the blue "chems", physiologically-enhancing, aren't the same, and he has to keep taking those. Unfortunately, they are only made in Manilla, so Cross poses as a Doctor to get into the facility with Marta, so they can viral off the blue pills too.
Cross confides in Marta that he is actually Kenneth J. Kitsom, an Army soldier who was killed by a roadside bomb in the Iraq War, and that he had below-average intelligence before he started taking the "chems"
Byer finds out the Cross and Shearing are in Manilla, so he sends out a brainwashed super-soldier to kill them.
Cross and Shearing are able to get in the factory and get through the viralling off process, but they are found out by the security staff, who were called by Byer.
They manage to escape, and have to seek shelter because Cross is starting to feel the effects of the process and he hallucinates about how he got in to Outcome under Byer's supervision. Cross wants Marta to leave him, but she refuses to after all he's done for her. This is when they finally connect.
The next morning, the police come for Cross while Marta is out buying medicine, but she gets back in time to warn him and then runs off.
The police go after her, and Cross manages to rescue her again, only the super-soldier has finally caught up with them.
Cross and Marta get on a motorcycle (and Jeremy Renner is already a talented motorcyclist which made the chase scene even more realistic) and have to evade the cops and the assassin.
They thrillingly manage to escape both, but are both bruised, bloodied, and shot up as they fall off the motorcycle near a boat dock where a Filipino man finds them and agrees to take them aboard. They pay him with a gold watch that Cross stole off the supervisor of the chem factory.
The end scene is of Cross studying a map on the deck as Marta walks up and joins him. They both agree that it doesn't matter where they go, as long as they're together.
I've seen some reviews online that they were disappointed in it, that it didn't live up to their expectations, but it did for me. I think its just because Matt Damon wasn't in it. It's hard for a movie franchise to take out a main character three movies running, and then put in their place a completely new character...but I think that Jeremy Renner's Cross was very much like Matt Damon's Bourne, and I believe that's why I liked it so much.
Cast:
Jeremy Renner: Aaron Cross
Rachel Weisz: Dr. Marta Shearing
Edward Norton: Eric Byer
Scott Glenn: Ezra Kramer
rated: PG-13
length: 2hrs 5mins
