The Bourne Legacy
2012130 minutes
rated PG-13
by Scott Mendelson
While Tony Gilroy's The Bourne Legacy is being touted as a spin-off from the Matt Damon-starring spy franchise, it actually functions more as a retroactive prequel. Rather than expanding the story or going off in a different direction, it spends an unholy amount of its screen time explicitly explaining the history and science behind a completely different 'super assassin' program from the one that once bred Jason Bourne (imagine if The Phantom Menace was primarily *about* midichlorians). Instead of telling a story of relevance or creating interesting characters that happen to exist in the world established by Doug Liman and Paul Greengrass (and of course stemming from Robert Ludlam's original novels), Tony Gilroy takes a proverbial pick-axe to the series, undoing much of the prior narrative while retroactively turning Jason Bourne (of course played by Matt Damon and occasionally seen here in still photographs) into not a conflicted anti-hero but a force of chaos. All of this would be forgivable and possibly intriguing if the resulting film weren't so bloody dull and unengaging. But The Bourne Legacy makes me want to apologize for every mean thing I ever said about The Bourne Ultimatum. The third film may have been a dumbed-down and amped-up remake of the superb Bourne Supremacy, but it at least had a pulse and sheer entertainment value. The Bourne Legacy makes one yearn for the comparatively high-quality thrills and chills of Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker.
