Matt Damon Should Slap You

I’d say Jason Bourne’s legacy has been pretty well besmirched 

Lock up your Blu-Ray players, kids...Jeremy's been to the movies again.  This week, he savages "The Bourne Legacy" starring Jeremy Renner and Edward Norton.  

I know some people like to question my taste in movies.  It comes with the territory when one is a fan of the cult classics like "Plan 9 From Outer Space" and "Manos: The Hands Of Fate."  I'm okay with this.  Sometimes it seems as if I tend to look for different things in film than others when it comes to what entertains me and what I'm willing to put up with for the next 2 hours of my life.  To each his own, yes?  

Well, perhaps I'm in the minority here, but when it comes to the plot of a film, there is something that I like to see happen during the course of the movie.  That thing is simple:  Something.  When given the choice between two films, one in which something happens, and one in which nothing happens, I'm going to go with the "something" film every time.  Maybe I'm wrong...I don't know.  Therein lies my problem with "The Bourne Legacy," a film which will be the top of the box office for as long as it takes people to figure out that they don't need to see this film.  It's 2+ hours of "nothing happens."  I've been to enough meetings at work where people sit around and talk on the phone about how nothing is happening...I don't need to go to the movies to see it happen to other people.  

Beware:  Ahead lie some minor spoilers....though Jeremy's already told you the most important thing about the movie.  

So, the general idea of the movie is that there are multiple Bourne-type agents around the world.  Only a select few people know who they are, and Edward Norton comes into town to kill all of them.  We have no idea where the actual Jason Bourne is, but that's beside the point...we need to kill the rest of them, and worry about Matt Damon later.  Jeremy Renner plays one of these agents (we're led to believe he's a really good one), and Edward Norton sits around various offices and conference rooms in Washington calling various people asking if he's dead yet, and wondering why not.  He sends a super secret agent out who then chases Renner around on a motorcycle for like 20 minutes.  Renner gets away.  Roll Credits.  

I'm not making this up.  

This concept of a super secret weapon has been done countless times, and the formula seems to work.  Send in the super secret weapon, cause conflict with the protagonist, protagonist ultimately wins through the power of the human spirit, and everybody goes home happy.  Ivan Drago, Dean Wermer, Ogie Olglethorpe, The Hawks, Johnny Lawrence of the Cobra Kai...I could go on, but you get the point.  It happens all the time.  In "The Bourne Legacy," director Tony Gilroy takes the formula and shakes it up a bit by having the super secret weapon come along in the last half hour of the movie and do precisely nothing.  He's really good at chasing people on a motorcycle, but not really good at catching them.  Then, he falls off the motorcycle like a Storm Trooper and is lost to the ages.  Edward Norton then has another phone call where he hears that Jeremy Renner escaped and is sad.  Seriously...the super secret agent bad guy never actually enters any sort of real conflict with Renner...just chases him around on a motorcycle while making menacing faces. 

Without the magic of filmmaking, I have to wonder what a day in the life of Edward Norton's character was really like.  8AM, he arrives in the office, calls somebody to tell them to kill Jeremy Renner.  Make a cup of coffee.  Call the guy back to ask if Renner is dead yet.  Use national security resources to find a picture of Jeremy Renner in an airport to find out where he's going.  Call somebody else in that country and ask them to kill Jeremy Renner.  Make a cup of coffee.  Call the guy back to ask if Renner is dead yet.  Have a meeting to ask how they're going to kill Jeremy Renner.  Call somebody else and ask them to kill Jeremy Renner.  Make a cup of coffee.  Call the guy back to ask if Jeremy Renner is dead yet.  He spends so much time on the phone with people while personally doing precisely jack squat that it's actually pretty funny.  Between scenes, is he calling people to ask for status updates, or is he sitting around talking waiting for the phone to ring with the aforementioned status reports?  He's like a really bad micromanager who doesn't seem to have anything to do except make phone calls and wait for phone calls to see if his plan worked or not.  I'm not surprised that it didn't.  Also, Edward Norton never meets Renner, or actually get people to agree with him on anything.  Stacy Keach was in the movie too, and nobody knows why.  It's a Bourne movie, so a bunch of old guys have to be involved somehow.  

Either way, I'm willing to lay the Legacy of Jeremy Is In The Theatre on the line and say that "The Bourne Legacy" is crap and you don't need to go see it. 

This has been another edition of Jeremy Is In The Theatre.