The Bourne Legacy: The sequel isn’t unwatchable and will certainly pass the time on TV, but it’s blatantly obvious that its only reason to exist is commercial f

The total box-office gross for the first three Bourne thrillers was nearly a billion dollars, so yet another sequel was inevitable, even if the original directors (Paul Greengrass and Doug Liman) and star (Matt Damon) weren’t interested. On this evidence, you can see why they decided to bail out.
Director Tony Gilroy wrote the first three movies, and is content to recycle the elements from the earlier films and give far too much space to unintelligible exposition about genetic engineering and American black ops departments. He utterly fails to add any shocking revelations to the mix – except that Jason Bourne is only one of a number of undercover super-spies the US government has been eager to kill lest news of their existence become public.
While Bourne is missing, presumed dead, the new agent we’re expected to root for is Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner), who’s in Alaska on a training exercise when his bosses decide to murder him.

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New face: While Bourne is missing, presumed dead, the new agent we¿re expected to root for is Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner)

From there, Aaron manages to escape to Chicago, where he rescues a beautiful medical researcher (Rachel Weisz) who is also scheduled for assassination. Together, they flee to Manila in the Philippines, where they are chased by the head honcho of the bad guys (that’s Edward Norton, given the thankless job of snarling at a succession of video screens) and a medically-enhanced oriental assassin who, for unexplained reasons, the American authorities can’t be bothered to kill.
Like previous Bourne films, this is essentially a series of chases, leading up to one long pursuit across roofs and streets. They’re efficiently shot and edited, and Renner clearly does a lot of his own stunts; but the final chase on foot and motorcycles outstays its welcome by at least five minutes. It’s a big problem that the last Mission Impossible film and all the recent Bond movies except the last have been more thrilling and visited a much more exotic range of locations.

Not so loved up: The burgeoning romantic relationship between Renner and Weisz is handled so perfunctorily that it may as well not exist

Too drawn out: The final chase on foot and motorcycles outstays its welcome by at least five minutes

The ingredients fatally lacking are originality and soul. Jeremy Renner’s a fine actor, but he doesn’t make you care if his character lives or dies.
Other good actors (Albert Finney, Joan Allen and David Strathairn are virtually walk-ons) are wasted on a screenplay that is almost all exposition and requires hardly any acting ability.
The burgeoning romantic relationship between Renner and Weisz is handled so perfunctorily that it may as well not exist.
At 135 minutes, The Bourne Legacy feels at least half an hour too long. The freshness has gone.
The best two movies in the series, the second and third, were brilliantly directed by Greengrass; The Bourne Legacy isn’t unwatchable and will certainly pass the time on TV, but  it’s blatantly obvious that its only reason to exist is commercial.
The Bourne Legacy is out in cinemas across the UK from today.