Living on survival instinct

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The Bourne Legacy

Genre: Action thriller

Director: Tony Gilroy

Cast: Jeremy Renner,

Rachel Weisz and Edward Norton

Being screened at theatres

near you

KATHMANDU: Bourne series and Matt Damon! That’s perhaps how you’ve always pictured as. But it’s time to change this. The fourth installment of the series brings forth Jeremy Renner as Aaron Cross instead of Damon as Jason Bourne in The Bourne Legacy. Disappointed? Don’t be, because not even once will ‘ohh Damon would have done this much better’ will cross your mind.

Despite all this, you still have your reservations. Being the fourth part, you don’t know what to expect. After all, see what happened with Ice Age 3. Of course these two are two different genres, but Ice Age 3 being the latest from the series lot, you just have to mention it more so because it was — horrible.

This premonition nonetheless, doesn’t stay for long. Once the movie begins, the Bourne series feeling kicks in, with the first scene — a man is floating in the water. When you are engrossed and wondering if he is dead, he starts swimming deep in the water, pulls out a cylindrical object, reaches the shore, wraps around a plastic (that’s what it looks like) and stands in front of a bonfire. This by the way is not in a pond or river; he is surrounded by snow and is in the wilderness of Alaska.

This man is Cross, a field agent for a black ops programme. And this entire Alaska business is part of his training. After climbing the mountain, Cross hunting for food, fighting a pack of wolves ... reaches a cottage two days earlier breaking the previous record and meets a man waiting for him. On one hand, Cross is completing his training, on the other hand CIA is working on disposing the black ops programme (it’s apparently a national threat) by terminating all the field agents.

Back in Alaska, Cross is getting ready for the next day, but the weather is not on his side. The man in the cottage offers to let him stay till the weather clears, but Cross figures out something is coming their way. The two split ways, only too late for the other man and the place is bombed. Cross survives. They are after him as well, but Cross manages to escape and reaches the house of an Outcome scientist Dr Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz), just in time to save her from being murdered.

Surviving is not the only answer here, they have to know what’s going on and set out on a mission to Manila, the Philippines. But obviously they are tracked down, yet that’s not the end. There is more and you will not leave your seat till the movie ends and ‘you’ find out what happens. You feel like you are the one trapped in such a situation and you become desperate to get out of it. That’s how well the director has made the movie. You actually forget it’s a movie. But towards the end of the film when Cross and Dr Shearing are being chased by an assassin, you can’t help but yawn a few times. The scene is unnecessarily stretched. Other than that, no complaints.

The action sequences are realistic (watch out for Cross and the wolf scene). You will not even think the movie has been shot in front of the green screen.

Renner makes Cross a perfect spy-in-the-making. Good acting, action and he makes sure that nobody misses Damon. Renner has created his own niche in the Bourne series.

Weisz is very believable as a scientist. She is a common person who is caught in a situation that everybody dreads and reacts like everybody would.

The pace of the film never slows down and you don’t realise when it ends, but it is not abrupt. All in all, the Bourne series feel is still alive making this one a must watch!