The Bourne Legacy was a perfectly fine summer action flick. The acting was good, the story entertaining and the chase scenes frenetic. But...
It wasn't quite up to the level of the original Bourne Trilogy. Every time you watched a new Bourne movie with Matt Damon you had the feeling this was original stuff. Even the car chases felt new and different. The stories were fresh and innovative. All three movies seemed clean and modern.
I like Jeffery Renner but he just doesn't have the on-screen charisma that Matt Damon possesses. The story seemed too familiar...a bunch of seedy government types tracking down a rogue agent while looking at big monitors.
The motorcycle chase scene was entertaining but a bit blah in comparison to the chase scenes in the originals. And the Chinese assassin who was billed as "Treadstone without the inconsistencies and Outcome without the emotional issues" (or somesuch) was the weakest by far of the Bourne enemies. SPOILER ALERT: he gets killed not by Bourne but by the girl with a helmet on the back of a motorcycle in very unconvincing fashion. He was not nearly as scary as the Russian in The Bourne Supremacy or the Tunisian in Ultimatum.
The intro plods on and on. We get it. He can climb mountains in Alaska while being chased by wolves. We already knew he was an enhanced agent. Move along now to a story.
So yeah, I was entertained. Rachael Weisz, as usual, was fantastic. It was a nice summer afternoon movie. But it wasn't quite up to snuff and deserves a bit of a lesser place than being included in The Bourne canon.
