Starring: Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Brian Cox, Joan Allen, Julia Stiles
Directed by: Paul Greengrass
Produced by: Pat Crowley, Paul Sandberg, Frank Marshall, Paul L Sandberg, Patrick Crowley
The Bourne Supremacy’ re-enters the shadowy world of expert assassin Jason Bourne (Matt Damon), who continues to find himself plagued by splintered nightmares from his former life. The stakes are now even higher for the agent as he coolly maneuvers through the dangerous waters of international espionage - replete with CIA plots, turncoat agents and ever-shifting covert alliances - all the while hoping to find the truth behind his haunted memories and answers to his own fragmented past.
The film, starring Matt Damon as the amnesiac ex-CIA killer Jason Bourne, is a terse, tight, impressively smart package, much like its predecessor, Doug Liman’s 2002 “The Bourne Identity.” Both movies try to reinvent that logy old white elephant, the Cold War spy thriller, for a new century of global anxiety, and both succeed by ripping up the playbook — which includes almost all of novelist Robert Ludlum’s original story line — and plunging the viewer into a mare’s-nest of international intrigue. The difference is that Greengrass’s knack for total immersion leaves a viewer hanging on throughout “Supremacy,” fighting disorientation and enjoyably
Instead of flashy fights where one dazzling kick to the throat knocks the bad guy out for good, the battles are messy and breathless and brutal. The chase scenes are like extreme bumper cars. And the primary pleasure is not some big save-the-world triumph, just the fun of seeing smart people outsmarted.
In the first episode, Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) is rescued from the ocean, shot but still alive. He can remember how to speak in many languages and how to kill someone a dozen different ways but he does not remember who he is. He does not remember who is after him. Or why.
The last movie lift him with a girl he loved and what seemed like a lifetime guarantee of being left alone on the beach to try to recover the rest of his lost memories and make some new and better ones. But happily ever after doesn’t make for a good sequel, so as this movie opens, someone is after him again. The CIA believes he was behind a recent assassination of two agents. CIA big shots Pamela Landry (Joan Allen), who is new to the mysterious Treadstone operation and Ward Abbott (Brian Cox), who knows more than he wants to tell, work together to try to track him down, though perhaps they have different purposes and goals.
Bourne still remembers very little of what went on before he was fished out of the water. But now finding out is a matter of life or death.
Allen strides around in long, cool, black Matrix-style coats and Damon is nicely inexorable and relentless. Julia Stiles adds punch as Bourne’s former liaison to the Agency. She explains how the Treadstone operatives worked: “They don’t make mistakes. They don’t do random.” When asked who is assigning Bourne’s targets, she says, “Scary version? He is.” Damon doesn’t get to do much acting but delivers a servicable performance in what is a serviceable movie. Like its title character, it does the job. And the last exchange of dialogue tops it all off nicely.
