The Bourne Legacy

For the longest time I thought that in The Bourne Legacy Jeremy Renner simply replaced Matt Damon as Jason Bourne. Not so. This film covers the second generation of special operatives and/or trained assassins.

If I got all this straight, during the Treadstone Project they were called Assets, for the Blackfriar Project they were Outcomes and then there is also a new project (but very hush-hush) called LARX and the operatives are called, well, LARX.

What is covered here is the story of what happened after (or while) the New York Jason Bourne fiasco took place. The ultimate asset (Bourne) and LARX #3 are merely the bookends to the story, however. Here we concentrate on Outcome Aaron Cross. This is the Jeremy Renner role.

Behind the scenes of Blackfriar (up to a point) and LARX (hush!) is Edward Norton, who runs a detail and yells at people around him, one of which is played by Stacy Keach. So, we have established that Stacy Keach is still alive and still working. Has he been in anything else lately?

And yes, this is all a adrenaline rush again. But if you (and I) thought that The Bourne Ultimatum had an impressive cast, well, this one here is even more impressive (see above and add Oscar Isaac as one of the Outcomes, Rachel Weisz as the Damsel in Distress and Zeljko Ivanek as a scientist that goes coo-coo; also they put Corey Stoll in the background and threw him a few lines).

The big chase here is car/motorbike, initially, and then moves to motorbike/motorbike.

A tiny step down from the previous two but still a nail biter.

6/10

The X Files: Ice

I once read that David Duchovny said that it was with this episode that he realized that they were involved in creating something special. The agents see a video of a man, visibly in distress, recording the final message from the crew of the Arctic Ice Core Project. A group of scientists has been sent to Alaska and celebrate having drilled deeper into the ice than anyone ever before (also documented on video). The final message sent is, "We are not who we are. We are not who we are. It goes no further than this. It stops right here right now." Right after he and a fellow scientist first points handguns at each other before pointing the guns each at himself and committing suicide.

The agents, together with a trio of specialists in different fields, are taken to the station by one Bear, apparently the only pilot willing to take them in unsure weather condition. It is the weather, as well, that will have the group confined to the station for longer than they like.

The group finds bodies of the entire Core Project team and some samples of the ice they brought up. The start putting the pieces together but only get ahead when Bear and Mulder are attacked by the station's pet dog. Bear gets bitten and infected with what it was that initiated the team's downfall. From way down in they ice they brought up something looking like a worm that uses a warm blooded body as a host, making the person or animal very aggressive towards their fellow creatures.

The weather, the situation, the desolation winds the group up in ways that could be a symptom of the virus or bacteria or whatever that worm thing is. By accident (one of the scientist infects an already infected sample) they realize that two worms inside the same host will fight and kill each other - thereby saving the host.

When one of the scientists is killed and everyone gets defensive, the group agrees that it must be Mulder who is infected. He was, after all, attacked by the dog. With only one live worm left, they want to insert it in the agent to 'save' him, but when Scully checks him for sign of infection she realizes it cannot be him. The agents, however, are unable to convince the rest of the group of this fact. In the physical alteration that ensues, they find clear signs that it is actually one of the scientists that is infected and she gets saved in the nick of time.

8/10

Hey, isn't that...?

Two of the scientist with Mulder and Scully are played by Xander Berkley (Red John himself) and Felicity Huffman (of Desperate Housewives fame).