With its plot taking place parallel to The Bourne Ultimatum, this film should probably be considered a midquel more than a sequel. It follows Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) and Dr Martha Shearing (Rachel Weisz) as they attempt to avoid assassination by their former employers at Treadstone, represented by Edward Norton as Eric Byer.
The problem is that film doesn’t do much to make you give a crap about what’s going on. Norton dumps exposition from the outset, telling you that “Jason Bourne was just the tip of the iceberg” and “Treadstone was just the tip of the iceberg”; you could play an iceberg reference drinking game to this film.
However none of this exposition really amounts to anything; early on they begin to kill off the employees and then it just becomes Aaron (who like Bourne is the product of a secret super-agent-creating experimental programme) attempting to track down a drug that will keep him alive, while protecting the whiny Doctor. Jeremy Renner is painfully uninteresting and lacks personality, so his continued existence is hardly of much interest. Similarly Rachel Weisz spends most of the film moaning and the other half whimpering in a corner.
The direction does little to help matters, particularly during the action scenes where the camera always seems to be in the wrong place. It’s damn near impossible to tell what’s going on in a fight between Aaron and a wolf, while at other times key details are missed by focusing on the wrong part of the scene. I would say that director Tony Gilroy should just stick to writing (he’s worked on the scripts for all the Bourne film) but the film seems to totally miss what made the originals so well loved.
The mystery is uninteresting, the characters dull; essentially the film just muddles along. The best action and chase scene comes at the end (despite it actually being shown in most of the trailers), by which point you will have totally lost interest; so massive plotting issues can be added to its flaws.
Overall Verdict: This midquel is so uninteresting and the characters so dull that you won’t care if they survive or not, and for the most part the action isn’t up to the standard we’ve come to expect from Bourne.
Special Features:
None
Reviewer: Matt Mallinson