Reason Writers at the Movies: Peter Suderman Reviews The Bourne Legacy
Senior Editor Peter Suderman reviews the fourth Bourne film in today' Washington Times:
There's not much to learn about Aaron Cross, the biologically enhanced special agent at the center of "The Bourne Legacy." As played byJeremy Renner, he's alternately driven and distracted, a weapon that looks like a person yet lacks anything resembling a personality.
Like Matt Damon's Jason Bourne, Cross is essentially a blank, albeit one with very good reflexes. But where his predecessor's primary goal was to reclaim his own identity, Cross aims only to keep popping the pills that transformed him into a super agent, lest he revert into his old dim self.
It's a telling difference. Bourne's blankness represented a loss, and it gave him purpose. Cross, on the other hand, is merely fighting to stay as blank as he was when we met him.
Mr. Renner projects an erratic magnetism that helps hold "Legacy" together, but even so his turn suffers relative to Mr. Damon's. But don't blame Mr. Renner for the unfavorable comparison: He was Bourne this way.
