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Move over Mr Cruise with your Missions and Mr Brosnan with your Bonds, the coolest super spy is back in town and he's here to stay. Two years ago Matt Damon salvaged his flagging career by starring as writer Robert Ludlum's creation Jason Bourne in The Bourne Identity (2002). The tale of an American agent found in the Med with a nasty dose of amnesia, The Bourne Identity took the spy thriller back to its roots, eschewing the high-wire acts and special effects of Ethan Hunt et al, and keeping its feet firmly grounded in the real world. Fast forward to 2004 and the phenomenal success of the original has spawned a sequel, The Bourne Supremacy, which takes its story from Ludlum's literary follow-up and sees Damon reprising his role.The film opens in Goa where we find Bourne living out a quiet existence with his girlfriend Marie (Franka Potente from the first film), ever aware that the villains of the first film may still be after him. 3000 miles away Bourne is framed for murder at the scene of a special ops mission and true to form, it's not long before a rival agent turns up and begins shooting. Marie is tragically shot in the head as they flee and Bourne is thrown back into the cold world of espionage he fought so strongly to escape. As he relentlessly takes the fight to those who wish him dead Bourne, in true globe-trotting style, traverses Germany, Russia, Italy and America in his search for reasons, revenge and respite. If The Bourne Identity was about escaping your demons, then The Bourne Supremacy is about returning to face them, and director Paul Greengrass wastes no time in hurling Matt Damon back into the fire. The new film racks up the action sequences and virtuoso survival techniques that Bourne exhibited in the original, and yet is careful not to supply a rehash of The Bourne Identity. Greengrass' edgy, realistic style (honed in Bloody Sunday [2002], his previous film about the 1972 massacre in Northern Ireland) brings a welcome dose of believability to the film, while his collaboration with DoP Oliver Wood brings an immediacy to Bourne's world through the use of handheld camera and up-close action. Writer Tony Gilroy also makes a welcome return, this time with a markedly more confident script that draws upon the missing pieces of the first outing – and incorporates them into this film's prevailing patina of fear and doubt. As well as Damon himself (who, as the posters proclaim, is Jason Bourne) the stately Brian Cox is back as Ward Abbott, while newcomer Joan Allen provides his character with a formidable adversary, in the form of Pamela Landy. But it's Matt Damon's turn as the sad, introspective Bourne that holds the movie together. Damon brings just the right amount of energy and restraint to his performance as the world-weary spy torn between action and passivity. Like the first film, The Bourne Supremacy draws on the current notion that everything is a threat, nobody is to be trusted and all intelligence agencies are corrupt, while sticking firmly to the basic principals that made Doug Liman's outing such a winner. If the third film (The Bourne Ultimatum) ever comes to fruition (and it undoubtedly will), we could have the makings of a thoroughly enjoyable spy series, and a serious rival at last for 007.
Reviewed by Deryck Swan
Reader comments about The Bourne Supremacy
James (Email address withheld) writes:
Firstly I cant believe im the first to comment on what is undoubtedly one of the best films in the modern action genre! It's been billed by some as 'the thinking man's action movie', and it's easy to see why. The film bears better comparison to the dark, morality concious world of Coppola's 'The Conversation' than to the bond films and other action/spy/thrillers it will be judged against. It's moral awareness and complex/realistic take on the world puts it in a different league to the often 2D stencilling of stereotypes that passes for character creation and motivation in the genre.
Jason Bourne is unlike most leading men in Hollywood films, a character who will just as often solve problems through brain as brawn and who can't kill without facing real world consequences.
The film doesn't shy away from harsh truths either, Bourne was a hitman and wheras most scriptwriters would put emphasis on the gunrunners and dictators he'd 'rightfully' knocked off the film hinges on flashbacks to the killing of a married couple by his hand in order to protect an evil oil tycoon. Bourne is a dark character fighting demons within and without with a moral barometer he's still developing. In one scene we will see him garrot an opponent in a quest for information, only to hold himself back from killing his partner's muderer in another because
'she wouldn't want me to'.
All of this is ably conveyed by Matt Damon who on the strength of his performances in both this and the last film certainly doesn't deserve to be the butt of the blonde jokes that have dogged him in such fare as Saturday Night Live and Team America: World Police.
Aside from and as well as MD's performance
the acting and direction is of a quality and style that could make you actually believe you were watching a documentary.
This impression of believability that the viewer is given is perhaps why the film is so easy to engage with, when someone is shot your as gripped as you would be if you saw it happen on the news.
All in all a fantastic film that builds on it's predecessor's strengths and moves forwards into more mature and ambigous pastures of creativity.
The thinking man's perfect sequel!
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