The Bourne Legacy

I remember a scene in The Bourne Ultimatum aka Bourne 3, where CIA Director Ezra Kramer (Scott Glenn) is having a phone conversation with Noah Vosen (David Strathairn). We get this from Stone:

“If this thing goes south, we’ll have to tie it off, roll it up, and hang it around Pam’s neck.”

One might think that this bit of planned scapegoating might be an effective place to start The Bourne Legacy. We do get about one minute of Noah Vosen lying through his teeth to a Senate committee, as well as Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) fending off the media hordes as she tries to defend herself of the charges of aiding and abetting an enemy of the United States. When do we get this? About two hours into The Bourne Legacy which opened today. This was just one of the many references to Bourne.

In my view – there are far too many Bourne references in this new film.

Any way, Ultimatum ended with Matt Damon‘s Jason Bourne surviving despite being shot and falling a dozen stories from a building into the East River in New York. He suddenly comes alive while submerged in the chilly waters, and swims off.

Well one super agent’s ending is the beginning for another super agent. This time it is Jeremy Renner as Aaron Cross and he is swimming in the ice-cold waters of an Alaskan river. This is a part of a training mission which no one bothers to explain. Cross was looking for and finds a submerged vial containing his meds. It takes a while for us to learn that Cross and his kind are not just skilled in the field, in hand-to-hand combat, or anything else via physical training and brainwashing as was Bourne. No, Cross, and his fellow agents who have been a part of Operation Outcome, and all their super powers come from biological refinements and genetic alterations that come from drugs.

Of course, Cross will soon come to realize that he has been targeted, like all the other Outcome agents, by the suits who run the program. Rather than name these suits, I’ll simply name the actors – from the top – Edward Norton, Stacey Keach, Donna Murphy, Dennis Boutsikaris, and Corey Stoll.

Obviously things have gone south (again or still isn’t clear) so the agents, all of whom are dependent on a steady stream of meds, that is, until they can be ‘locked in’ which means they retain the super abilities but no longer need the meds, are called in for re-dosing, but are given a deadly poison pill instead. Four of them die off nearly instantly. All except for Aaron Cross who was able to avoid being blown up by a missile launched from a drone, as well as fighting off a wolf – all while still in the Alaskan wilderness.

Back in the states – at a scientific lab where all the behavior modification research is done, a scientist goes bonkers and begins to kill off all of his fellow scientists. All are killed except one – Dr. Marta Shearing, played by Rachel Weisz. Maybe it was sheer luck (no pun intended), but this particular doctor was the one who administered the drugs to Aaron Cross while he was still a human lab rat.

Moonrise Kingdom

So I stepped into one of those little mini-mazes the movie theaters set up to guide, control, and gently feed the ticket buyers, in orderly fashion, to the ticket windows. A few people were already at the windows buying tickets, but no one else was next in line.

However, two women, likely in their late 50′s or early 60′s were standing in mid-maze.

‘Excuse me, are you ladies going to buy tickets?‘ ‘Not yet, we are still deciding what to see. You may pass us – any recommendations?‘

I said that I was going to see Moonrise Kingdom. And they asked what is it about?

I said that I couldn’t say more than it would take you back to the time when you were both 12!

They said that sounds interesting and they followed me towards the ticket window. I never saw them after that as I lost about 7 minutes waiting in line to buy snacks.

But yes, Moonrise Kingdom, directed by Wes Anderson and written by Anderson and Roman Coppola, is about two 12 year-olds. While it is not quite a coming-of-age film, it is truly about an adventure that the two kids take, and what is even more interesting is that this film is not a film that seems to have been designed for today’s kids. Instead it seems that Anderson created this film for people in their late 50′s and early 60′s, because they are the ones who can mostly likely identify with people who would have been 12-13-14 years old in the 1960′s.

Of course, being 12-13-14 might be the same at any point in history (up to a point) with only the influential toys, clothing, and other things like cultural idols, icons, and artifacts changing over the years.

On New Penzance Island, a mythical island – actually the film was shot in Rhode Island – Sam Shakusky, a 12 year old Khaki Scount has gone missing. Scout Master Ward, played by Edward Norton, discovers this only after making his morning inspection and then sitting down at the Mess where the place settings and the headcount of seated scouts differ by a count of one. Who’s missing?, asks the Scout Master.

Where’s Shakusky……?

It takes them a few moments to figure out that it is Shakusky. His tent is zipped from the inside, but this isn’t much of barrier. After Ward unzips the tent entrance, they peer inside the tent and see no one …

… and the mystery immediately intensifies. In a remarkable feat of stating the obvious, Ward says, Shakusky has flown the coop. Peeling back a poster taped on the inside tent wall. they discover a hole big enough to crawl through.