Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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89 of 103 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The opposite of Bond...and very good for it, December 15, 2004
There are no world domination conspiracies. No extravagant super-gadgets. No deadly supermodels and megalomaniac geniuses. Just Bourne, his wits, a couple of guns, and whatever else he can get his hands on.
Firmly entrenched in reality (as much as having a martial arts expert with photographic memory, incredible marksmanship and driving skills, coupled with fluency in at least four languages, and spycraft/black ops training is feasible in the real world), The Bourne Supremacy follows in the footsteps of The Bourne Identity to deliver solid action which is a refreshing break from the cartoon shenanigans of Bond.
The film opens two years after the events of The Bourne Identity, where Jason Bourne, a black ops assassin played by Matt Damon, had become amnesiac and severed his ties with the CIA. Jason and his lover, Maria, played once again by the German actress Franka Potente, have been skipping around the globe and are currently hiding in India. However, events beyond his control conspire to drag him back to the conspiracies and machinations of hidden players. An undercover CIA agent is murdered in Berlin, and all the evidence points to Bourne. Brian Cox, Julia Stiles, and some minor players return from the first movie, and Joan Allen is introduced as a high level CIA administrator who wants to track Bourne down. There are plenty of twists and turns along the way, lots of globetrotting, including visits to Paris, Berlin, and Moscow, and great set pieces.
The return of most of the cast from the first movie serves as a great means of establishing continuity. Strangely enough, Ms. Stiles is once again delegated to a very minor role (in the first movie, she was little more than a glorified phone operator), but this time around, she has a key scene with Mr. Damon. Ms. Allen has great presence and manages to hold her own in her many scenes with Mr. Cox. Mr. Damon thoroughly inhabits the role of Bourne, convincingly playing a ruthless assassin who, despite intense conditioning to be a remorseless killer, is struggling to regain his humanity. Mr. Damon has once again spent considerable time conditioning himself for the role, and it shows. He is lean, fit, and utterly believable in his fighting sequences. However, more than being just another action hero, Mr. Damon also brings convincing intelligence to the role. The audience can believe that Bourne is constantly thinking two steps ahead of everyone else, that anything can become a weapon in his hands, that he is always considering a way out, and that every act, even simply picking up a bottle of vodka, has a reason.
The image quality of the DVD is excellent, although in parts it seemed too dark. The filming technique used by the director, which involves extensive use of hand-held and shoulder-mounted cameras, has been much criticized, and must have been a dizzying experience in the movie theater, but in the confines of a big screen TV, it serves to bring the viewer right into the action. Granted, some of the quick editing and shaky camera work make a few of the fight scenes claustrophobic and confusing, but that seems to be the desired effect. There are a handful of deleted scenes (which are of much lower video quality and don't really add much to the plot; they are also all strung together - one cannot select individual deleted scenes), director's comment track, and some other production segments. I have not heard the director's commentary or examined the other documentaries, yet. One nitpick of the DVD is Universal's decision to add unskippable advertising at the beginning. One cannot press menu to escape; one is forced to fast forward through the useless ads.
Highly recommended.
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18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Spellbinding Entry Into The New Bourne Series!, July 23, 2004
Wow! Talk about a taut, mind-numbing set of sequences full of energy, moment and action, this sequel to the original -The Bourne Identity- is that most elusive of entities, a much better, tighter, and suspenseful movie than its original. This sharply spun tale allows Matt Damon to reprise his role as Jason Bourne, the recovering amnesiac CIA spy gone AWOL, this time running for his life through a catalogue of cities from Goa, India to Berlin, and from Berlin to Moscow. And with an action coda that brings to mind the breathless pace of such action classics as Steve McQueen?s -Bullitt-, it is so quick, deft, and terrific one can literally get lost in the activity.
Damon is superb as Bourne, an angry, amnesiac, and absolutely murderous foe for anyone who crosses his path with deadly intent, which seems to happen with stunning regularity in this film. Given the current popular disgust and disdain for the CIA, the movie hits home by portraying its hierarchy as thugs in business suits, bent on silencing Bourne regardless of his innocence or guilt. Damon is losing some of his boy-next-door qualities, but burns up the screen with an Eastwood like set of facial expressions that underplay the emotions and make the dialogue often sparse and terse. His physical presence more than makes up for the verbal void, however. His moves are nothing short of spellbinding.
Luckily, the plot avoids the current morbid Hollywood preoccupation with terrorists, middle Eastern personalities, or religious overtones, and rather chooses to concentrate on more traditional East European skullduggery with undertones of big money and dirty oil deals in setting the stage for murder, mayhem, and some of the most outrageously memorable car chase scenes this side of -The French Connection-. This is an exciting movie franchise that one can rest easy about, knowing it will certainly be fleshed out entertainingly over the years by Damon and company. With superbly and smartly produced thrillers like this, why not spin the yarn as far as it will go? Enjoy!
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Oh the difference a director makes, July 28, 2004
Cubby Broccoli started it with James Bond films. Changing directors all the time is one of the ways they have been able to keep James Bond fresh and contemporary, preventing the series from falling into a repetitive pattern.
I assume that was the reason Doug Liman didn't direct this part two of the Bourne saga and passed the megaphone to Paul Greengrass.
All things considered I think the story would have been better with Limans style. Liman put togther a wonderful story that revealed the mystery in a way the always left more questions to come. The action sequences were fast, brutal and believable.
Greengrass in my opinion relied to heavily on hand held cameras during most of the action scenes and even quite a few non-action scenes. I have no objection to use of the "shaky cam" but like a spice, it can be over used and ruin the effect. Instead of connecting the audience to the action overuse of the shaky-cam, made it difficult to follow much of the action.
Most of chase scene had the camera basically in the passenger seat next to Bourne and it moved about so much the audience missed most of the best parts of the action.
Overall the movie was well done, but would have been much much better with Liman back at the helm. In the case of the Bourne movies, I think consistency would be better especially considering how good the first film really was.
Other areas of detail were very good. The bombs used to blow up the electrical panels would most likely have been Semtex in a real mission and the prop bombs had a Semtex like color and texture. I though that was a nice touch. I do appeciate details done correctly.
On the other hand, Greengrass used the TV show style silencer sound (the tweeter). That was just laziness considering how the original film went to lengths to use a more realistic sound effect when Conklin received his "payoff" at the end.
Matt Damon again brought a strong performance to the role of Bourne thus cementing his claim to being a credible action star. Brian Cox came very close to stealing the show with his portrayal of Abbott and Joan Allen was well cast as Pam Landry. It was even nice to see snippets Tom Gallop as Conkin here and there. I'll miss Franke Potente in subsequent films hoping maybe they'll do a soap-opera deal, after all there was no body....
This was a good film but disappointing in two respects. The story was no where near as interesting as the first movie. I would be willing to beet that more than half of the audience in the theater didn't even understand the whole plot even after it had been revealed. That and the overly shaky camera work detracted from what could have been a 5-star film.
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