MOVIES: The Bourne Supremacy

I caught a sneak preview of The Bourne Supremacy last Tuesday night. Since it's not due to be released until July 23, I'll consider this entire review a spoiler, and hide it accordingly.

(Actually, I wasn't even going to post this review, since it kind of rambles, and honestly, my heart's not really in it, but, hell, it's Movies day, and I gots nothin else.)

Overall, I was disappointed. The acting was fine, the story was interesting, and the characters generally did smart, logical things. Where it failed totally was during what should be the highlights of a spy thriller -- the action scenes.

I'm assuming that the director previously worked in videos and commercials -- and that probably tells you all you need to know about his style of directing. The camera just would not sit still for one damn second. Always zipping and whirling and jittering and jumping, 8,000 cuts per second, spinning and whooshing right past what you wanted to look at. It got to the point where I wanted to yell at the screen, "Sit still and show me what the hell is going on!!" The fight scenes may or may not have been well choreographed, the chases may or may not have been cleverly staged -- I don't know, because I couldn't see a god damn thing that was happening. The camera would only show a millisecond of a fist moving, or an extreme close-up of a head jerking back, or some damn thing or another blurring past my field of vision. (During the car chase, for example, I could never tell which car was where, but I remember about a dozen good shots of the gas pedal, because that's important.) I actually got angry at the direction, and a little bit queasy. I'm not an idiot, who can be distracted by shiny, flashy objects. I just want an action scene presented in a straightforward, easily comprehensible, and entertaining manner. Is that too much to ask for? These days, probably yes.

It's a shame, because so much of the rest of the film is well done. Brian Cox -- and I'll warn you again, these are all spoilers -- Brian Cox returns from the first film, reprising his role as the man who created the Treadstone program responsible for Bourne's training; he is revealed here as the traitor everyone is looking for -- which, really, is obvious fairly early on. I mean, he's the only major character in the government who is insisting that Bourne be killed; he runs interference on every move Joan Allen, as head of the search for Bourne, puts forward. But Cox is a great actor, and he plays the villain well. Joan Allen is also a great performer, but she doesn't have an awful lot to do here; it's like Judi Dench's role in the Bond movies, overkill for an underwritten role. But she's a solid presence, anchoring the team hunting down Bourne. Franka Potente also returns from the first film; she's sweet during her limited screentime, but sadly, she doesn't last very long. Julia Stiles also returns, and again, it's overkill for her small role. She's excellent in her few scenes, especially the one in which Bourne interrogates her, but she could be starring in her own films, rather than taking small parts in the Bourne series. Makes you wonder why she's even here. Chris Cooper, who was killed in the first film, even has a cameo in a flashback, which was a nice touch.

And Matt Damon as Jason Bourne is fine as well. His character doesn't get much development here; apparently, he's sworn not to kill again, at the request of his now dead love, Franka, but his decision to leave certain of his enemies still breathing after he's gone to such lengths to hunt them down is a little mystifying (especially the man who put the bullet in Franka's head -- and especially considering there's at least one other person he does kill). A lot of his backstory is left out of the film; when Joan Allen reveals Bourne's real name at the end of the film, I realized that this film doesn't even explain that Bourne doesn't know his real name. And when Julia Stiles lists the side effects some of the Treadstone agents have suffered, Allen asks, "Amnesia?" And Stiles replies, "Before Bourne? No." If the viewer hasn't seen the first film, he might assume the project caused Jason's amnesia, rather than a blow to the head.

But Bourne for the most part plays it smart -- the film and the character both. Bourne gets captured in an airport -- but only because he wants to be caught, to identify the people who are chasing him. To buy some time after a fight, he pulls a gas hose out of the wall, then stuffs a magazine in a toaster and pushes the lever -- a unique time bomb. He arranges a meeting with Julia Stiles in the middle of a protest march, so he can grab her and get lost in the crowd. And a scene at the end, where he confronts the daughter of a couple he killed in his pre-amnesia career, and breaks the news to her that it was not a murder-suicide, as he had staged it to look, that her mother did not pull the trigger -- it's a tough, compelling, dark, smart scene, well-played by Damon. You almost hope the daughter will kill him in revenge. I think it's bold to have a scene like that so near the end of the film; he's attempting to redeem himself with this confession, but he only makes himself look more horrible to the audience. It trusts the audience to stay with the character, and it works. Somehow, though, I get the suspicion that scene will be changed after these test screenings; might be I'm the only one in favor of such a dark scene.

Would I recommend The Bourne Supremacy? There are things I enjoyed, but in the end, in its present form: no, I would not. Maybe on DVD, or on HBO, but definitely not for full price in the theaters. I just think the action scenes, which are vital to a film like this, are thoroughly inept in their execution, and completely unenjoyable, and I don't think there's any way they can be fixed without re-editing them from scratch. Which won't happen.