You don't need Matt Damon to revive the Bourne film franchise. And you probably don't need Paul Greengrass, the quick-cutting action auteur who directed the best of the Damon films about Jason Bourne, the trained and chemically altered super-spy who has lost his memory and is being hunted by the very people who made him.

But if you're bringing back Treadstone, introducing a new spy and new government overlords searching for him, moving on from Bourne, hoping to build on his "Legacy," you darned sure better grab us, straight out of the box. An epic chase for your finale, two hours later, isn't enough.

Tony ("Michael Clayton") Gilroy burns through 30 minutes of "The Bourne Legacy" without much happening. He takes a good, solid hour before getting this sequel-reboot on its feet. And an hour of Edward Norton, Stacy Keach and Donna Murphy and company sputtering dense spy agency jargon in a dimly lit "sit rep" room full of computers, phones and TV monitors is more than a test of patience.