Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner),a genetically engineered warrior, needs more meds to keep going. The people who ran illegal black ops fear they will be exposed to the government and decide to kill off all these warriors and the scientists who make the meds so they cannot talk.

Basically, this is one big chase movie and it is very exciting. The editing during the foot race, car and motorcycle chases later on are fantastic. I am not sure how much CGI was used as everything looked too real. Great stunts. Kudos.

The supporting cast of Edward Norton, Stacy Keach, David Strathaim, Scott Glen, and Albert Finney do a credible job just as a supporting cast (hey, it's not their movie) trying to kill off Cross and Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachael Weisz) the doctor who knows how to make the meds Cross needs. The way Cross and Dr. Shearing are tracked by Col Byer (Edward Norton) and crew is really incredible as they have access to cameras and satellites worldwide. Quite smooth the way it was done.

I had my doubts about Rachael Weisz in this but she proved more than capable and quite sexy beautiful. She couldn't have been any better. Okay, yes, I fell in love with her.

Now, why Jeremy Renner as a new action hero? Did you forget his role in Tom Cruise's movie Mission Impossible, Ghost Protocol? He did a bang-up job in that one looking out for Cruise's Ethan Hunt and had some moves that opened important casting eyes. So it made sense. See?

I almost expected a meeting with Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) and Aaron Cross because in this movie Jason Bourne is alive and doing his thing. They did show Jason Bourne's picture early in the movie and that got me to thinking about a meeting. Didn't happen. But, may in the next movie as you know these sequels will never end. And, that is a good thing. (9/10)

Violence: Yes. Sex: No. Nudity: No. Language: No.

Having recently watched the original Bourne trilogy films, they left me with the sense of how did it take me so long to see them. Really liked 'Identity' and 'Supremacy' and loved 'Ultimatum', even if neither were flawless.

Didn't really have high expectations for 'The Bourne Legacy'. From hearing about it, it did seem like it, despite having the name Bourne in the title, would not feel like a Jason Bourne film and that it would not be the same without Matt Damon. It also sounded like it was not much more than a pointless cash-grab. Finally seeing it, giving it the benefit of the doubt as deserved, 'The Bourne Legacy' was nowhere near as bad as feared and there are some good elements. To me, however, it wasn't a particularly good, let alone great, instalment and one really does question the point of it.

There are obvious strengths. On a visual level, it is every bit as slick and stylish as the original Bourne trilogy and the locations are stunning. The music pulsates and fits well without being over-bearing. While the action does seem not enough, some of it is executed very well and are pretty exciting, the highlights being the tense shoot-out in Weisz's character's home and the climactic motorbike chase that despite perhaps being on the too long side delivers big on the thrills, so much so one wishes that too much of the rest of the film delivered just as big.

Jeremy Renner had big shoes to fill and does so more than capably. Matt Damon and the character of Jason Bourne are very much sorely missed that it feels like a gaping hole has been left, but Renner does bring intense steel and vulnerability. Weisz's character is somewhat underwritten, but she makes much of little and shows an appropriate and necessary sympathetic charm.

On the other hand, Edward Norton phones it in in quite easily the weakest villain of all four films put together, injecting very little menace or gravitas at all. The supporting cast do do capably enough, but too many of them have next to nothing to do, some like Stacy Keach are so underused that one questions why they are even there in the first place. Paul Greengrass and Doug Linman Tony Gilroy is not, while showing beforehand he excelled as a writer there was an air of inexperience in his directing. It seemed like Gilroy was trying to hard to imitate Greengrass but without the excitement and intensity.

In 'The Bourne Legacy', the thrills don't come consistently with some scenes going on for too long and feeling muddled and underdeveloped. The script is messy, doing very little with the characters and too often it is far too talky but without the intelligence, subtlety or sharpness of 'Identity', 'Supremacy' and particularly 'Ultimatum'. It's very clunky and confused as well.

Story also could have been much better executed. It starts interminably slow, and while the connections and overlapping to the previous films (particularly 'Ultimatum') were okay on their own their placement was clumsy, convoluted and upset the flow. Understanding a film is very rarely a problem with me, some of 'The Bourne Legacy' was ridiculously convoluted.

Overall, a little better than expected but it wasn't needed. Anything deserves to be judged as standing on its own feet without being compared, but the drop in quality is so significant after the first three films being as good as they were that it was incredibly difficult to ignore. 5/10 Bethany Cox

I come to this film as a huge, huge fan of the Bourne trilogy. They're films I can watch over and over again, enjoying them repeatedly each time. So I was eager to see how this spin-off worked out, given that Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon have chosen not to return to the fold at this time.

The worst thing about the film is Tony Gilroy, who returns to the franchise having been a writer on it for a long time. Here he directs as well, but he's no Greengrass, and it's pretty obvious most of the time that this is a piece of emulation. Lots of the scenes recall other, better moments from earlier films. It's almost as if Gilroy is looking back nostalgically on what worked in the past, hoping that he can repeat the same success here.

He can't, although THE BOURNE LEGACY remains a fitfully entertaining movie. The action sequences, when they come, are very well handled and almost on par with those of the original trilogy; a showdown in a house is a highlight, and the lengthy motorbike chase at the climax is brilliantly conceived. But, at a two-hour-plus running time, there's actually very little action, and genuine problems with slow pacing. Some of the time I was looking at my watch, waiting for something to happen.

Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz (whom I usually dislike) are blameless, both turning in decent, character-focused performances, and when stuff's happening the film gets really good. But it's all the extraneous stuff that drags it down: the repetitive attempts to tie things into the same timeline as the Bourne saga. Edward Norton's villain is pointless, and scenes with returning actors David Strathairn, Joan Allen and Scott Glenn are completely irrelevant. If they'd excised everything like that, focused it down entirely on Aaron Cross, brought the motorbike chase forward to the hour mark and given the film a genuine climax with Norton, it would have been much better and possibly on level with the earlier films. As it stands it's fun but flawed, certainly the worst of the four but still better than most of the DVD action trash I watch