Still Bourne

Beginning more or less where “The Bourne Ultimatium” left off, “The Bourne Legacy’’ is interrupted from time to time for news bulletins about the search for Matt Damon’s rogue CIA agent Jason Bourne, last seen jumping into the East River to escape his former handlers.

Disappointingly, Bourne never resurfaces in this less-than-satisfying series reboot. The film is more a talky, convoluted, action-starved two-hour subplot starring Jeremy Renner as another, far less interesting special agent who goes on the run with Rachel Weisz for reasons that are never clearly explained.

Paul Greengrass, who took over the “Bourne’’ series from Doug Liman for the second and third installments, staged chases and action with such visceral excitement that the implausiblities of the labyrinthine plots whizzed past.

Tony Gilroy, who contributed to the writing of all four “Bourne’’ films, steps in as director (he previously did well with the drama “Michael Clayton’’ and the spy rom-com “Duplicity’’), and disastrously reverses the talk-to-action ratio.

Renner (“The Hurt Locker”) is a formidable actor, but having him open with a half-hour of eyeball-glazing exposition — even as the film fails to flesh out his underwritten character — does no favors to him or the audience.

Following Bourne’s defection, the CIA decides to shut down a program that’s created a race of super-agents using experimental drugs to enhance their mental and physical capabilities. Rather than simply issuing pink slips, the agency literally eliminates these agents as well as the scientists servicing them.

You’d think they’d do this in a less messy and highly publicized fashion than driving one of the scientists to massacre his colleagues in a laboratory, but this does make for a fairly suspenseful sequence as Weisz’s Dr. Marta Shearing manages to elude death.

Renner’s Aaron Cross, meanwhile, has not only eluded missiles aimed at him during a training mission in Alaska (where he wrestles a very phony-looking computer-generated wolf) but manages to fake his own death; a less loquacious super-agent played by Oscar Isaac isn’t so lucky.

For reasons that go inadequately explained, Aaron shows up at Shearing’s home just as a black-ops team is about to execute a terminal severance package. He fakes her death, too, and demands as repayment that she find a way to make his powers permanent.

Edward Norton, another formidable actor, spends an awful lot of time glowering at video-surveillance screens, since he’s not entirely sure that Shearing has been disposed of properly. He also hisses a lot at his superior (played by Stacy Keach, who looks as if he wants to punch out Norton).

After what seems like three hours, Aaron and the doctor sneak into a pharmaceutical lab in Manila to give Aaron his fix. I’m not sure whether they are there because hardly anybody uses the Philippines for Hollywood action films these days or because they offer more lucrative tax abatements than, say, Louisiana or Michigan.

This leads to a confusingly shot foot-and-motorcycle chase with a CIA assassin that goes on for so long, I forgot exactly what the point of it was.

“The Bourne Legacy’’ isn’t helped by cameo appearances by “The Bourne Ultimatum’’ co-stars Joan Allen, David Strathairn and Albert Finney, all of whom remind us of the sequel with Damon we’re not seeing.

The whole thing is sort of like watching George Lazenby playing James Bond in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’’ while knowing that the producers are desperately negotiating a deal with Sean Connery to return for the next film. Renner and the audience deserve better.