7. The Plot
Perhaps it might have been easier to forgive the dearth of action if the plot were more involving, but it mostly recycles ideas from the previous films and expects them to work once again. With Jason Bourne having disassembled Operation Blackbriar at the end of The Bourne Ultimatum, we are told that there are more operations that the CIA need to close down as they attempt to keep their noses clean from media investigation. One such operation is Operation Outcome, and so to tie off the loose ends, all of the operatives are assassinated, except, of course, for Aaron Cross, who evades it and decides to enlist Dr. Shearing - who helped test the participants - to help expose the truth, and more specifically, keep his supply of pills going. Though the initial half of the film mostly composes of Cross' training exercises, and his avoiding assassination, this is all pretty generic thriller fare, and it's only once Cross makes it to the US that the story begins to take off. However, Cross never really makes an effort to go after Ed Norton's Eric Byer, and instead the bulk of the film's second half has him simply trying to track down a stash of pills so that he doesn't lose his mental acuity. Also, there are some rather absurd scientific plot points that strain credibility, such as Dr. Shearing's ability to "viral out" Cross, by means of injecting him with a virus that would "lock off" his mental aptitude at whatever level the pills had to-that-point elevated it to. During the film his physical abilities have already been locked off - as conveniently services the action scenes - but he needs to secure his cognitive function, or he'll not be of much use to anyone. The problem is that such a personal story does not work when we're not given a developed protagonist to root for, and a revenge story against Byer and the other stuffed shirts would likely have gone down easier. The political element, meanwhile, involving Byer and his cohorts trying to clean up their acts, is layered but ultimately contrived and poorly explained, mainly serving as a buffer between scenes to give Gilroy something to bounce Cross off of. When it finally gets to the more visceral elements of this operation, these also borrow from the last film especially, as another operative comes after Cross and Shearing, just as Paz and Desh came after Bourne and Parsons in Ultimatum. It just feels rather unimaginative and obvious, and right up to its ending, follows in the same tradition as the previous films, concluding with Cross and Shearing on a boat having escaped the bad guys for now, as a new mix of Moby's Extreme Ways hits. Part of the reason the plot seems so bloated and mundane is because...