They lost me in Manila. "The Bourne Legacy" is an action-packed re-boot of the Bourne franchise, where we learn that Jason Bourne was not the only enhanced operative of a secret government program. Jeremy Renner does a fine job as Aaron Cross, an outstanding example of the program, as we learn in the prologue, when the mysterious agency turns on its own. Running from his creators, he teams up with a program researcher, Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz), whose life is also in danger. The set up, the handlers, the ruthless action sequences are all of the caliber one would expect from the writer of the previous Bourne scripts, Tony Gilroy, who also steps up to direct this one. But things get a little too crazy in Manila, where Aaron and Marta go to access what she needs to free him from his dependency on agency-supplied medication. Manila, the exotic-location-du-jour, presents plenty of crowded picturesque places, but the roof jumping, chases, and narrow escapes are too long and too jumbled to follow. These sequences are just not up to Bourne standards. So they lost me. It's a plausible sequel, though, with good characters and actors, and may well live to fight another day.
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