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The Bourne Supremacy review
2004.09.07 — Entertainment | Movies | Movie Reviews | by Andrew Cole
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Jason Bourne takes control. [official site] |
The first Jason Bourne movie swept thru theaters like a secret agent: quietly. It struck with deadly force in the home video market, tho, ensuring that Robert Ludlum's amnesiac assassin would get another mission. He has, and it's one of the best of the genre.
The Bourne Supremacy picks up a couple of years after Identity left off. Bourne is shifting around Europe with Marie, living off his CIA money and battling his inner demons. Someone implicates Bourne in a counter-strike mission that takes out a couple of CIA agents and steals the files they were after. Suddenly, someone is on Bourne's tail again, flushing him out of hiding... and that's dangerous for everybody.
Supremacy is so tightly written, so tensely plotted, that it makes other secret agent thrillers pale in comparison (are you listening, 007?). |
Supremacy is so tensely plotted, and so tightly written, that it makes other secret agent thrillers pale in comparison (are you listening, 007?). Bourne is a man in the wilderness, struggling just to get thru the day, but cross him and you'll find yourself in a world of hurt.
I like the fact that Bourne, again played superbly by Matt Damon, is not conflicted about who he is. He's troubled by it, but he only uses his skills when he is backed into a corner, unable to just walk away. One of the best moments is when a low-level diplomat working for the CIA comes to pick him up from the airport security who have detained him. We know this guy has no idea what he's in for.
[Marie] could have shown... what a gal can learn by being on the lam with a super spy..., but she doesn't. Bond girls have more fun. |
Franka Potente returns as Marie, but has even less to do here than in the first film. It's a shame really. Potente is a fine actress, and Marie a gutsy character. She could have shown a bit of spine, demonstrating what a gal can learn by being on the lam with a super spy for a couple of years, but she doesn't. Bond girls have more fun.
CIA goons are the heavies again (with some help from elsewhere, but I won't spoil it), with Joan Allen and the returning Brian Cox doing the heavy lifting. Julia Stiles returns as the functionary who is in over her head (a character I love).
The locales are in Europe again.... They are fresh, alive, and exotic.... Spy thrillers shot in America are boring. |
The locales are in Europe again, which I like. They are fresh, alive, and exotic to the American audience. Spy thrillers shot in America are boring. We don't have passenger trains to speak of, and you can't have a chase on an airliner, so every American action movie features overpowered sports coups racing along wide-open urban streets. Even when Bourne does get in a car chase, it's more likely to take him around impossibly tight cobblestone streets, down a flight of stone steps, and into a pedestrian-strewn platz.
I look forward to the next Bourne movie: The Bourne Infinity or The Bourne Serenity or The Bourne Mortality or whatever. I hope it doesn't involve Bourne running away from the CIA again, tho. It's not easy for me to hate the CIA much. Sure, they're incompetent and possibly corrupt, but they aren't evil. Maybe Bourne can take on a freelance assignment and take out some real bad buys.
Just not an evil industrialist bent on world domination from his mountain lair. That would be unbearable.
f e e d b a c k
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