Bourne Legacy is both a sequel and a reboot of the popular spy series from the previous decade that was solely responsible for the revival of realistic action, although the producers won't call it the latter in hopes of getting the star of the series, Matt Damon, back on board for the next iteration.
Matt was absent from this one due to his insistence that he won't do another Bourne movie until previous director Paul Greengrass is on board again too, so, as a result, we see a new action hero, played by Jeremy Renner in a movie instead directed by the writer of the previous films, Tony Gilroy. Renner's character is similar to Bourne's in that he becomes a rogue spy outwitting his one time U.S. government employers, who, this time, try to include him on a massive assassination of all super-spies bred under their various Treadstone/Blackbriar/Outcome programs in a cover-up attempt necessitated in light of the Congressional investigations triggered by the actions of Damon's character in the previous films.
As a result, while we still get the fast-paced, tense, mutliple-locale storyline that Gilroy typically penned for the first three films, the generous kinetic action that we saw in the previous iterations is less present, although it does try here and there, especially with the now-token car chase scene included near the end as always. But while fans of the Bourne series may come away disappointed, it still, by itself, is one of the better action films to come out this year.