By Mike Wilmington Wilmington@moviecitynews.com
Wilmington on Movies: The Bourne Legacy
THE BOURNE LEGACY (Three Stars)
U. S.: Tony Gilroy, 2012
I miss Jason Bourne already — missed him, in fact, even before I saw The Bourne Legacy, fourth in the multi-million dollar grossing Bourne spy movies, based on Robert Ludlum’s books. That series, you’ll recall, initially starred Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, super-spy on the run, and now, with Damon gone (after three outings), stars Jeremy Renner as Aaron Cross, another super spy on the run. Cross, however, is not in any way related or connected to Jason Bourne, or to any other Bourne, beyond the fact that they were both involved in top secret “skill enhancement” programs that the government has now discontinued, and wants forgotten, along with Jason Bourne and anyone like him.
That’s the problem. There is no Bourne in The Bourne Legacy, and, crucially, no Matt Damon to be Bourne. Damon, whose on-screen boyish intensity, awareness, fighting skills and brains are a good fit for complex spy stories like Ludlum‘s, opted out of doing a fourth Bourne. So did director Paul Greengrass, the hell-on-wheels docu-style helmer of Bourne II (2004’s The Bourne Supremacy) and of Bourne III (The Bourne Ultimatum) and had even sarcastically referred to a possible Fourth Bourne (the movie that ultimately became The Bourne Legacy) as “The Bourne Redundancy.“
Did anyone, I wonder, then suggest that Doug Liman, the director of the first Bourne (and the best), The Bourne Identity (2002). Perhaps not but the director they did pick is the choice I probably would have made myself: writer-director Tony Gilroy, who wrote those first three Bournes, and this one as well. Gilroy, a very good screenwriter who’s especially good at tricky, off-chronological construction (the press notes call him a “narrative architect”) also wrote and directed the excellent George Clooney thriller, Michael Clayton, and the okay Juliet Roberts -Clive Owen romantic comedy thriller Duplicity. (The Clooney Excitement? The Roberts Duplicity?)
The Bourne Legacy, despite missing the Bourne Essential, and any other Bournes, is full of Gilroys: Tony as writer-director, his brother Dan as co-writer, and Tony’s twin brother John as editor. (Their father was Frank Gilroy, the author of “The Subject Was Roses).The result is a perfectly good action film, as fast and explosive and action-packed as you could probably want, well-cast and rather cleverly written to boot, but lacking (as most of them do) enough drama and humor and character to counterbalance the action and make it memorable — and missing also the one Bourne factor that made the other films (especially the first) so special: Bourne
The Movie begins with a bang: Jeremy Renner as Cross, running around Alaska, climbing mountains, popping some kind of colored drug or medicine or skill-enhancer, and hooking up with Oscar Isaac, who plays a role listed in the credits as “Outcome 3.” (Obviously, all that has something to do with skill-enhancement and the hush-hush project Operation Outcome.) As you might have guessed, the two of them, in Outcome’s isolated mountain lair, are attacked by heavily-armed government spy craft, at the behest of Edward Norton as (Retired) Colonel Eric Byer. Byer later claims that his villainous actions, which send Cross off on another mad race up and down mountains, across the snow and through ravenous wolf packs , are “morally indefensible and absolutely necessary.”
That’s what they all say.
THE BOURNE SPOILER ALERT
What next? Cross, like Jason Bourne, when he was around, runs all around several cities on several continents. Included on his travels, or the movie’s, are jaunts/battles/links in New York, Chicago, Seoul, Karachi and Manila, but all he finds anywhere are a lot of maniacs trying to shoot and kill him, take away his skill enhancements and keep complaining (maybe) that he isn’t Matt Damon. They also try to kill the lady on his one good rest stop, Rachel Weisz, as the brilliant but beleaguered Dr. Marta Shearing — a scientist who helped with Cross’ skill enhancements, and might be able to get him the drugs he desperately needs, But the assassins keep killing and slaughtering and otherwise behaving abominably at the behest of Edward Norton, right up to the movie’s piece de resistance, a Bullitt/French Connection chase special, on motorcycles, in Manila. The villains, a well-performing, tireless group, include Donna Murphy and Veljko Ivanek.
END OF SPOILER
The result is entertaining, but disappointing, better than most action or spy thrillers, but not as good as the previous Bournes, or as Michael Clayton. And the major reason is not the script, the production, the direction, or the acting — all of which are pretty much standard for the series — but the absence of the original star. The Damon Disappearance.
Do I exaggerate? Is Damon really The Bourne Indispensable? Well he is, if you’re looking for the special qualities he brought to the Bourne Trilogy: believable confusion, anguish, resilience, idealism, paranoia casual heroism, and the ability, like Lola, to never stop running. There are three main kinds of spy movies: The James Bond super-spy type, and the Eric Ambler or Three Days of the Condor type where the hero is more ordinary, plunged into something he doesn’t quite understand, or the darkly realistic John Le Carre. Model. The Bourne films, in a way, combine bits of all three.
I’m not sure Damon was right in abandoning the Bourne Ship. It sometimes helps a serious actor to have a franchise series under him — and I‘ve often felt the younger Alec Baldwin made a mistake in dropping out of the Tom Clancy-derived Jack Ryan novels when he did — even though I dislike Clancy-derived Jack Ryan novels myself. Anyway, I wish Damon had made this one. It’s not that Renner isn’t up to snuff; he’s a natural, magnetic actor with a lot boiling under his mug, and he’s perfect for the kind of cursed hero or villain roles he played in The Hurt Locker and The Town, and perfectly acceptable for, say, some new Cross Trilogy, with The Cross Narration or The Cross Befuddlement. But to have a whole film called The Bourne Legacy, and have Matt Damon pop up (as I remember) only in one head shot on TV, with references to or characters from The Bourne Ultimatum included off and on, strikes me as chintzy. What‘s next? Bourne in the U.S.A.? Bourne on the Fourth of July? Bourne Yesterday? (I realize that’s an old joke, but, in way, so is The Bourne Legacy.).
Maybe they should have forgotten Bourne entirely and called this one The Cross Prescription. Or maybe they should have kept waiting for Damon to come around, and maybe lured him back by hiring his old buddy Ben Affleck to direct, and filled up the movie with Afflecks as well as Gilroys. Bourne Free? What the hell: It’s only a movie.
