Fourth Sequel a-Bourning

Disagreeing with some critics' blah reviews, Ramin Setoodeh lists seven reasons to see Tony Gilroy's excellent "The Bourne Legacy." Here's the eighth: It conspicuously sets up a fifth Bourne film in which Matt Damon's Jason Bourne could join Jeremy Renner's new genetically enhanced super-antihero, Aaron Cross, to rescue Joan Allen from scandal and ruin.

Bourne screenwriter Gilroy got to direct "Legacy" after Paul Greenglass, who made no. 2 ("The Bourne Supremacy") and 3 ("Bourne Ultimatum"), bowed out. Damon's willing to be Bourne again if and when Greenglass directs. But other veterans of the Greenglass "Bournes" did appear in Gilory's movie, including Allen, who has a brief but intriguing scene as CIA official Pamela Landy.

At the end of 2007's "Ultimatum," she and Bourne exposed the illegal black ops program that trained Jason to be an assassin. The action of "Legacy" occurs at exactly the same time, as yet another batch of CIA boneheads work desperately to shut down and cover up the even creepier black ops program to which Renner's Aaron Cross belongs. In "Ultimatum," Landy's the triumphant whistle blower. In her scene in "Legacy," we learn that the tables have turned. The sinister forces she exposed are again in control, while she's evidently under indictment for assisting alleged traitor Jason Bourne.

I can't imagine that either the filmmakers or Allen would bother with a 45-second Landy subplot if they weren't hoping to tease Bourne out of retirement, perhaps in concert with Aaron Cross, for another two hours of tightly-wound, high-tech, cold-as-steel truth and justice rectification, the ultimate super-spy buddy movie. With a bow to Bob and Bing, they could call it "Road to Langley." Moby could record the fourth (by my count) version of "Extreme Ways," the best spy movie theme song ever. Here's his third, recorded for "Legacy" with a 110-piece orchestra.