I've only seen The Bourne Identity. I'll admit, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum just didn't really appeal, and I think it might be because of Matt Damon. However, I found myself wound up in the cinema ready to watch The Bourne Legacy.
This film follows a new hero, Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner), who takes over the protagonist role from Matt Damon in the previous films, who is a member of the Department of Defence's Operation Outcome. As a result of Jason Bourne's antics in the previous film, the Operation Outcome is on lockdown and is offing their own agents, by replacing their green pills (that enhance physical abilities) and blue pills (that enhance mental abilities) with an orange triangle pill that... well, it kills them, as a form of cover-up. However, Aaron Cross just isn't really happy about this and goes rogue, trying to escape from Operation Outcome. Meanwhile, Eric Byer (Edward Norton) brainwashes a Doctor Donald Foite (Zeljko Ivanek) to cover up Operation Outcome's at the lab (involving the Green and Blue pills), and Doctor Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz) manages to be the only survivor! Cross makes his way to Shearing's house and manages to save her from a second assassination attempt, however he has a plan. He wants Shearing to help him wean off the pills so that Byer and Operation Outcome have no control over him anymore. What follows is a cat and mouse chase across America and the Philippines as Cross and Shearing try to escape the clutches of Operation Outcome.
First things first... I have to say that The Bourne Legacy does a very good job of expanding the Bourne story without relying on the audience to have seen all of the previous Bourne films. Like I said, I haven't seen the previous two films, yet not once during Legacy did I feel confused or not know what was happening. The reason for this is all down to the expansion to new agent Cross, because the film kind of pulls a James Bond (a new actor taking on the lead role) and takes some time at the beginning introducing us to the new protagonist in the film franchise. While the start was the slowest part of the film (we first meet Cross at a training facility in Alaska), I feel it was needed to establish Jeremy Renner in the new role.
Also, for the film's 12A rating (in the UK, kind of the equivalent of a PG-13 in America), the film does pack quite a punch. The stand-out scene for me that racked up the most tension most definitely has to go to the massacre in the science lab. While some of the later motorbike and rooftop chases are also extremely tense, the massacre just served the purpose to show just how far Byer would go to cover up their legacy. I think credit is due to the Director/Screenwriter Tony Gilroy (Duplicity), who has only directed three films in total, but is definitely honing his craft to direct a good action scene very well. There was only a slight annoyance with the film, which was Gilroy's obsession to have a zoom-in every now and then. They seemed to come at the most inopportune moments and took me out of the story for a slight second, but the story and direction quickly grabbed me back in again.
The casting of the film is also a strength to the film. Renner's growing reputation as an all-action film star is definitely taking another step up in this film. With previous credits such as Avengers Assemble, The Town and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol already behind him, his shining point in The Bourne Legacy definitely had to be his ability to handle a motorbike (for some reason, I could have completely seen him as Bond in Tomorrow Never Dies!) and the shootout at Shearing's house - at one point he parkour climbs up the outside of the house, throws himself through the window and then takes out the assassin with just one bullet. What a badass! However, credit is also due to Rachel Weisz as Dr. Marta Shearing who treads the fine line between inexperienced sidekick to ass-kicking sidekick very well. There's a tendency to overplay the need of the female sidekick's inability at the start of the action/spy film, but Weisz takes this stereotype and smashes it away as she barely flinches when she fires her gun. It was kind of refreshing.
However, while Weisz and Renner did a good job, I felt a bit disappointed with Edward Norton's role. After loving him in The Incredible Hulk, I wanted to see him play a straight villain, but I don't think he was given enough to do in this film to make him truely formidable. He spent most of the time sitting in a room, surrounded by monitors telling other people what to do. Surely, he should have grabbed a gun and come face to face with Renner himself?! If the film would have taken the role of being bigger, better and more badass with it's villain, then The Bourne Legacy could have really ratcheted up the tension.
So if, like me, you haven't seen The Bourne Identity, Supremacy or Ultimatum then don't let it put you off seeing Legacy. What we've got here is a brand new agent going rogue against the agency that created him, it just suffers slightly from having a slightly weak villain.
*** / *****
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