The Bourne Synopsis

by Colleen

Well, your fearless co-author was manipulated into watching The Bourne Legacy with her mother while on vacation in South Haven, MI this weekend after some not so veiled comments were made about the fine quality of the movie's actors (Edward Norton, Rachel Weiz AND Albert Finney? oh my), a certain someone's openness to seeing "a movie...any movie really, even that Bourne movie...," and noticing that our walks around the small, sleepy downtown always involved passing by its only movie theater with the compelling Bourne Legacy poster on the marquee (I think some one had a little crush on the male lead. (That someone wasn't me.)).

Despite my lack of diligence in keeping up with the second and third Bourne installments after seeing the first, it turned out viewing them wasn't at all necessary for enjoying the forth in this Bourne Trilogy....+1?

I think this was largely due to the movie's plot being incredibly linear*.

In fact.

If you strip away all the chase/fight scenes, explosions, and special effects, the effective movie that's left is like so-

*****SPOILER ALERTS*****



5: I need blue and green pills to survive - incidentally they also have the side effect of making me awesome. My bosses are currently trying to kill me, so they're not so interested in making sure I get my refills, which I really need. NOW.

bio-chem chick: Ahhh! I can't think straight right now because they just tried to kill me too! Also, you don't really need the green pills.

5: what?

bio-chem chick: We attached the genetic mutation which increases your strength to a virus substrate and then infected you with that live virus. Your physical enhancements are permanent now.

5: Ok... ok...  Well...how do I get more blue pills then?!

bio-chem chick: We keep the virus for the blue pills in Manila...

5:  Could you do the same thing to me with the blue virus?

bio-chem chick: You're asking me to adapt a highly theoretical process to a completely different and exponentially more complex system in your body using a procedure we haven't even run on a computer model, much less tested on any animals or subjects.

5: Do you know how to do that?

bio-chem chick: Well....I would just inject the blue virus directly into your body.

5: Let's go to Manila.

(They fly to Manila. They arrive at the research lab. bio-chem chick injects 5 with virus.)
(5 gets sick, 5 recovers.)

5: It worked.

bio-chem chick: Let's go.

(They leave Manila and avoid being caught.)

5: ...

bio-chem chick: Let's hang out?

5: ok

fin

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*I do realize that all action movie plots are linear. But some action movie plots are more linear than others.