Overall Rating
 Awesome: 35.57%
Worth A Look: 42.95%
Average: 11.41%
Pretty Bad: 8.05%
Total Crap: 2.01%
9 reviews, 95 user ratings
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| Bourne Supremacy, The |
by Erik Childress
"Your Fugitive’s Name Is…Jason Bourne. Isn’t It? Whatever…Go Get Him!"
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The popularity of The Bourne Identity turned out to be one of the biggest surprises for all those involved. Its release date was swapped about as much as Prozac Nation and was whispered to be a disaster. The joke was on the cynics as it turned out to be one of the leggy hits of 2002 and became the #1 rental title of 2003. I was more apathetic, viewing it as a rather slow-moving, tedious exercise with a couple really solid action sequences. Now comes the sequel during a summer with some of the best sequels on record. On cue, it lives up as a definite improvement. Just don’t expect the wheel to be reinvented. The car chase, on the other hand…well, it won’t be long before you get to it.That’s because The Bourne Supremacy moves like a thunderbolt riding a cheetah. The first time I looked down at my watch I was shocked to discover that 75 minutes had already flown by. Barely a second goes by before our hero is being chased, in a fight or someone is plotting to chase or fight him. Basically you have The Fugitive with CIA agents moving through an entire plot that could be written on a napkin.
Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) has been globetrotting with Marie (Franka Potente), the gal who gave him something worth remembering. But just when he thought he was out, they pull him back in thanks to an elaborate frame-up that places him killing a pair of agents in Berlin. Their superior, Pamela Landy (Joan Allen, in a completely phoned-in role) wants answers and enlists the help of Bourne’s former handlers, Nicky (Julia Stiles, proving that even the CIA has crybabies) and Ward Abbott (Brian Cox) who shut down that chapter of his past. There are also some pretty boring Russians running around, duly responsible for this mess, who bookend the hunt for their one loose end.
Sure, Bourne is still piecing together his memory and the previews have done well preserving one major twist (don’t go for popcorn too early). A second one is pretty obvious (think L.A. Confidential or Minority Report). Otherwise this is one great big enduring chase, country-to-country-to-train-to-car-to-foot. Director Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday) keeps the action moving so fast that his camera can barely keep up with it.
For once, close-ups and erratic movement during the fight sequences actually work. When Bourne battles the final member of his project hand-to-hand, it is done in mainly one-shots (CLOSE one-shots) but the lack of cuts provide the sense of peril necessary to get our adrenaline going, even if our neurons have to catch-up to the previous punch. The car chase from the original was a well-done, if quite overhyped affair (about on par with a solid early one here) but, boy, do we get a doozy at the climax. Taking into account that the principal motor vehicles would sooner be eliminated at a demolition derby, it combines the earlier histrionics of the mano-a-mano with enough crashes, squealing, hydroplaning and skillful special effects to justify applause.
Damon is a large piece of why the film doesn’t succumb to just another assembly line action time-waster. I don’t necessarily care who Jason Bourne is and I cared even less wading through the first go-round to discover the rather limp reasoning for his amnesia. But Damon institutes a belief and that’s enough for me. The next step of his twelve-plan reform to stop killing is rather blasé, but then again so is most of Tony Gilroy’s adaptation of Robert Ludlum’s first two Bourne novels. I don’t know what admirers of Ludlum’s content think of the films, but it only takes a backcover glance to realize that they are completely independent of the text, flying further from the reservation than even Bourne has tried to.Reducing Ludlum’s tales to dimestore trivialities was probably inevitable. Tom Clancy’s techno-prosing is always trimmed to fit the action medium, so there’s no sense crying over them if you haven’t partaken in the paperbacks. I’m more partial to the Clancy film series, even through three different incarnations of Jack Ryan. I suspect Damon will out-Bourne them with at least one more run through and I welcome him to along with Greengrass for another outing, hopefully with a richer screenplay to maneuver within. All-in-all, The Bourne Supremacy doesn’t have any meat to offer, but serves up a pretty satisfying appetizer for 100 minutes.
 del.icio.us 
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=10220&reviewer=198
originally posted: 07/23/04 14:01:16
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USA
23-Jul-2004 (PG-13)
DVD: 07-Dec-2004
UK
N/A
Australia
26-Aug-2004
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