212, The Bourne Legacy

Time to engage your brains people and pay attention, this is not a movie of which you are allowed to leave your intelligence at home. 

Firstly - If you are reading this blog and are planning to see this movie without first watching the Bourne Ultimatum then stop what you are doing, switch off your computer and go and either rent, buy or use whatever digital TV provider you have to stream this movie then come back and we will start again.

Even though this is a 4th instalment for us - this movie doesnt follow on from the last but runs alongside the events of the last Bourne movie, Ultimatum so without knowledge of the story it'll be tricky to fully keep up to date with the sequence of events taking place.  While Bourne and Lundy are busy working to take down Treadstone another, far higher department have realised that after Bourne's almost superhuman events in Moscow (about 1/3 through Ultimatum) its time to cut all ties with the Treadstone / Black Friar program.  That means take out all other agents, scientists etc involved leaving no stone unturned.  This role falls to Edward Norton and his team of CIA geeks to act independently of Treadstone and minimalise risk, just in case Bourne succeeds in his mission.  That my friends, is where Legacy kicks off.

We are kept up to date with the time frame of Ultimatum as events unfurl with news bulletins and press releases staggered throughout Legacy and While Jason Bourne is doing his thing, Norton is successfully taking out operatives and scientists with undercover sleeper agents.  On each side we manage to have a survivor - from the Agent side its Jeremy Renner, Agent 5 of 9 who manages to luckily escape a drone attack while training in Alaska and for the scientists its Rachel Weisz who manages to hold off her assassin just long enough until security take him down.  Now both are hunted with the intention of permanently silencing the pair who meet up and work together to avoid capture, imminent death and try to make sense of everything going on.

Its a brilliant movie.  There is so much more involved in the plot than I've written above but most will need to be seen to be fully understood.  The action sequences are fast and furious, the parallel chain of events from Ultimatum are fed seamlessly into Legacy and the idea of having them play out this way in a new concept I've not seen before with prequel or sequel and I loved it. 

You need to have you game face on for most of it, especially the first 30 minutes or so when snippets of Ultimatum are regularly fed into Legacy e.g the death of the news reporter Ross (at Waterloo) who uncovers Treadstone as well as a few others and to the unknowing eye who's not seen the first trilogy you could easily get lost but for the rest of us - you should pick it up quite easily.

It does calm down eventually with the full plot of Legacy taking shape and less interaction with the last movie and thats when you feel you can lower the heart rate slightly but dont get too comfy because it then goes into overdrive!

Renner and Weisz are both fantastic in their roles.  Norton is smooth, slick and although after our heroes - you cant fault this guys determination & organisation to track, find and kill his targets. 

I've not got a bad word about it - there are Jason Bourne references throughout although Matt Damon is only seen in photographs however that's the Ultimatum side of the movie - the Legacy part is definitely all about Renner who I think could even kick Damon's ass if needed.

Watch the first three then add this to the list - its a definite MUST!