I am a huge fan of the Bourne movies, and Jeremy Renner is my latest candidate for hunk-of-the-year, and so while I was disappointed that Matt Damon didn’t return to the franchise, I was predisposed to like this movie.

I did really enjoy the movie, but there are some major differences compared to the Matt Damon movies.  Moviegoers should not expect to go into this movie and expect to see the exact same movie, only with Jeremy Renner instead of Matt Damon.  And that’s a good thing because the two actors project different strengths and weaknesses.

First, the movie does a really excellent job integrating the Jason Bourne storyline into the plot.  The best way to think of The Bourne Legacy is that it’s a spinoff of the Bourne franchise, not a sequel.  And Jason Bourne’s character is mentioned often in the context of the movie’s plot, which is an excellent way to tie the movies together.

Second, Jeremy Renner is a more nuanced actor in his role as Aaron Cross than Matt Damon was as Jason Bourne.  Reasonable minds can disagree on this point, of course.  But the movie fleshes out the Aaron Cross character more than the previous movies did of Jason Bourne (other than as an unparalleled killing machine).  The ramification of this character development is that the movie has a more deliberate pacing than the previous Bourne movies.  In the previous Bourne movies, once the action started, you were treated to a rollercoaster of non-stop action scenes—explosions, killings, etc.—until the ending.  That is not the case in this movie (not that there’s anything wrong with that).  The action scenes are well done and, in many instances, more realistic than the Matt Damon action scenes (as in, yes, I can see how a mere mortal could have survived that scene).  But interspersed with the action scenes are scenes where the plot of the movie actually advances.  If you like the Bourne movies solely for the action scenes, The Bourne Legacy may seem a little slow to you, but I thought the movie did a very good job combining plot and action into a seamless whole.

Edward Norton, who I think is one of the best actors around, does his usual superb job at making ruthlessly cold-blooded decisions look rational and inevitable.  Joan Allen has a nice cameo role as does David Strathairn.  There was also a nice understated chemistry between Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz (who wasn’t nearly as unbelievable as a PhD virologist as, say, Denise Richards was as a nuclear physicist in one of the James Bond movies).

The movie has a PG-13 rating, and Common Sense Media recommends it for children 14 and above.  I would disagree with both those ratings.  There is no doubt that The Bourne Legacy is less explicitly violent than its predecessors.  However, it certainly doesn’t lack for broken necks, pools of blood, and dead bodies—there is just a lower body count and the deaths are generally less messy than in the other movies.   I still would be highly cautious about taking any child under 15 to this movie.

I really, really liked The Bourne Legacy.  The acting was consistently excellent throughout the movie, and Jeremy Renner carried the movie effortlessly as a vulnerable but skilled assassin.  The plot was very good (not always a given in an action movie), and I look forward to more in the series.  And, if they could somehow convince Matt Damon to come back and team up with Jeremy Renner in a Bourne movie, that would be ideal!