The newest ‘Bourne’ tarnishes the legacy of the series

by Jason Harris

Since Matt Damon didn’t want to come back to the series without director Paul Greengrass, who directed the last two Bourne movies, Universal went ahead with continuing this lucrative series with a new character, Aaron Cross.

The “legacy” part of The Bourne Legacy title does work since the character of Cross, portrayed by Jeremy Renner (The Avengers), is in a similar program like Bourne was and the government is trying to kill him. And since Bourne is mentioned by people and news casts, along with his name carved into a piece of wood, Universal feels justified using the Bourne name in the title.

Cross is introduced at a training site in Alaska. It turns out he’s being punished for asking too many questions. Cross is more talkative than Damon’s Jason Bourne. This is shown when he is speaking to another agent who is more like Bourne in the talking department.

Cross is an Outcome agent. Outcome is a different training program then the one Bourne went through. The Outcome program uses blue and green pills to sustain its agents’ mental and physical capabilities. This is what drives the story since Cross needs to get his hands on these “chems” so he can outwit the government and survive.

Director Tony Gilroy has a feel for this series, since he had a hand in writing the screenplays for the entire series. He even added layers to the Treadstone and Blackbriar programs and created new ones.

The movie is peppered with action, but it doesn’t live up to the previous movies. With that said, it would be interesting to see Bourne and Cross team up in a future movie. That would be a legacy worth seeing.

Two and a half stars out of four.