Movies:The Bourne Legacy

Movie: The Bourne Legacy Running time: 135 minutesGenre: Action Directed by: Tony GilroyCast: Albert Finney, David Strathairn, Edward Norton, Jeremy Renner, Joan Allen, Rachel Weisz, Scott Glenn, Stacy Keach Available at: Isoko Video Library, downtown Kigali.REEKING of a desperate attempt to keep a valuable franchise afloat, this disappointing fourth Bourne film is written and directed by the screenwriter of the preceding trilogy, a specialist in conspiracy thrillers. The idea is that the military-industrial complex, against which Eisenhower warned in his 1961 farewell address as president, has been running numerous experiments to produce super agents like Bourne to fight in the cold war and the “war on terror”. Having been exposed in The Bourne Ultimatum (partly by a Guardian journalist), the chilly super patriots running these projects must close down shop and terminate with extreme prejudice its staff and their creations. Prominent on the list is agent Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner), a leading product of the clandestine programme Outcome, along with the now guilt-ridden research scientist (Rachel Weisz), who knows him only by a number. To obtain the special drugs that keep Cross alive, they journey to the Philippines, where a big pharma company manufactures this elixir, and where the film pushes the envelope in Manila with the most drawn-out chase in all the Bourne pictures. It lasts 15 minutes, crossing rooftops on foot and speeding through traffic jams in cars and on bikes, but it’s not a patch on the infinitely cheaper, far more ingenious seven-minute handheld chase around Hong Kong in Wayne Wang’s low-budget 1989 thriller Life is Cheap... But Toilet Paper is Expensive.

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Movies:The Bourne Legacy