The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

THE BOURNE SUPREMACY

Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten

Universal Pictures/MP Theta Productions

Grade: C

Directed by: Paul Greengrass

Written by: Tony Gilroy

Cast: Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Brian Cox, Julia Stiles, Karl

Urban, Gabriel Mann, Joan Allen

Screened at: Loews Lincoln Square, NYC, 7/20/04

  For a while since the end of the Cold War, the CIA was not

supposed to be engaged in political assassination. That's

before names like Osama Bin Laden came up, allowing the

present administration to change the rules. To what extent was

the ban on killing for the U.S. made with a wink-wink, nudge-

nudge? The average American may never know, but two years

ago Doug Liman directed Matt Damon and Franka Potente as a

CIA assassin and his girl friend in "The Bourne Identity," a

crackling spy thriller from the Robert Ludlum novel, the former

having no memory of what he had done. The amnesia, for

cinematic purposes, may be metaphorical as well as literal in

that killers-for-hire are supposed to "forget" their evil deeds,

particularly if they are reformed or if they've been discarded by

their government.

Now with "The Bourne Supremacy" under the helm of Paul

Greengrass–whose "Bloody Sunday" about a clash between

British soldiers and Irish civil rights workers in the Northern

Ireland of 1972 make him a wise choice for a down-and-dirty

fictional piece–Bourne is back. This time he's running–in a

Jeep, in a taxi, on his legs–from people who are chasing him in

commandeered cars and high-power rifles. His girl friend thinks

he's paranoid since, after all, he has little idea why anyone

would want to get him, but piece by piece his memory is to

return showing him to be not so much an evil killer as a man just

following orders and later dumped and perhaps disgusted with

his recent past.

Greenglass keeps the action as taut as his predecessor,

including a car chase that's among the best in years, but while

the picture is built around the cat-and-mouse game involving

CIA operative (Joan Allen), agentWard Abbott (Brian Cox) and

field operative Nicky (Julia Stiles), we are oddly so distanced

from these characters that it's difficult to care for any of them.

Do we want Bourne to get away? Who knows? The plot runs

strictly on adrelanin, but though the performances from Cox,

Allen and Damon are on target, there is so much going on that

even by the film's conclusion we're not clear how a Russian

Secret Service agent--who appears on the take from a strange

bespectacled man who wants Bourne as dead as the CIA that

washed their hands of him--is part of the story. Tony Gilroy,

who scripted the original as well from the Ludlum novel, may

wonder how his plot lines became so muddled.

In his New York Press review, critic Matt Zoller Seitz indicates

that "like the original, the sequel throws out so much tangled

information at such a hell-on-wheels pace that...one eventually

gives up trying to keep the story straight and responds to the

picture as a work of pure cinema." That's simply not enough.

Rated PG-13. 108 minutes. © 2004 by Harvey Karten

at harveycritic@cs.com

==========
X-RAMR-ID: 38308
X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 1299862
X-RT-TitleID: 1134105
X-RT-SourceID: 570
X-RT-AuthorID: 1123
X-RT-RatingText: C