126. The Bourne Legacy

Title: The Bourne Legacy
Genre: Action, Adventure, Mystery
Year: 2012

Summary: Aaron Cross is a member of Operation Outcome, a Defense Department black ops program which enhances the physical and mental abilities of field operatives through pills referred to as "chems". Cross is deployed to Alaska for a training assignment, where he must survive certain activities and traverse rugged terrain to arrive at a remote cabin. The cabin is operated by an exiled Outcome operative, Number Three, who, upon arrival, informs Cross that he broke the previous mission record by two days.

Meanwhile, the Blackbriar and Treadstone programs are publicly exposed (during the events of the previous film, The Bourne Ultimatum), leading the FBI and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to investigate CIA Deputy Director Pamela Landy, Blackbriar supervisor Noah Vosen, Treadstone clinical researcher Dr. Albert Hirsch and CIA Director Ezra Kramer. Kramer requests help from Eric Byer, a retired Air Force colonel responsible for overseeing the CIA's clandestine operations. Byer discovers potentially damaging video on the Internet in which the lead researchers for Treadstone and Outcome appear together at professional functions in public. To prevent the Treadstone investigation from finding and revealing Outcome's top-secret scientific advances, Byer decides to end Outcome and kill its agents. He sees this sacrifice as acceptable because the government has already separately initiated next-generation "beta programs" like LARX.

Byer deploys an unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) to Alaska to destroy Number Three's cabin and kill both him and Cross. Cross hears the drone's approach and leaves the cabin moments before a missile destroys it with Number Three inside. The drone detects Cross's presence, but Cross destroys it with a sniper rifle. Realizing that his superiors have ordered his assassination, Cross removes a tracking device in his thigh and force feeds it to a member of a wolf pack hunting him. A second drone soon kills the wolf, and Byer assumes that Cross has been killed. Byer engineers the death of other Outcome assets through poisoned yellow chems. To erase the Treadstone-Outcome link, Hirsch dies of an apparent heart attack before he can testify before the Senate. Byer also tries to eliminate Outcome's elite private research lab by chemically brainwashing scientist Dr. Donald Foite into locking the doors, killing his colleagues, and then committing suicide when corporate security finally breaks in. The only survivor is geneticist Dr. Marta Shearing.

When a "D-Track" team of undercover CIA assassins attack Shearing at her house, she is rescued by Cross, who convinces her to help him. He saw press coverage about her survival, and sees her as his last link to the chems. Shearing reveals that without his knowledge, Cross has already been genetically modified to retain the physical benefits conferred by the green chems without continuous consumption—a process called "viraling off"—but still requires regular consumption of the blue chems, which improve intelligence. Cross and Shearing travel to Manila, where the chems are manufactured, to help him viral off of the blue chems. While en route, Cross confides in Shearing that he is really PFC Kenneth J. Kitsom, a U.S. Army soldier reportedly killed by a roadside bomb during the Iraq War. He admits that he had below-average intelligence that the chems enhanced, and fears the loss of his enhanced intellect. Byer tracks Cross and Shearing to Manila and correctly guesses their plans. He orders LARX-03, a chemically-brainwashed supersoldier, to kill them.

In Manila, Cross and Shearing bluff their way into the factory that produces the pills, locate the live virus "stems" from which the pills are made, and initiate the viral-off process. Byer contacts the factory's security staff, but Cross and Shearing manage to escape. They take shelter in a flophouse, where Shearing helps Cross recover. During the night, he hallucinates about his initiation into Outcome, under Byer's supervision. The following morning, police surround the flophouse while Shearing is away buying medicine. She screams out a warning to Cross, who escapes and rescues Shearing from pursuing police officers. Cross and Shearing steal a motorcycle, pursued by both the police and LARX-03. After a lengthy chase through the streets and marketplaces of Manila, the police lose them and LARX-03 fatally crashes into a warehouse pillar. Shearing and Cross slide off their damaged motorcycle, and are rescued by a Filipino boatman. They pay him a gold watch (which Cross stole earlier from the chem factory's supervisor), to take them out of the country. The movie ends as they sail together along the islands of El Nido, Palawan, Philippines en route to Vietnam.