Another movie franchise ruined

Rating: Null/10 (21 July 2004)

I enjoyed The Bourne Identity, but the sequel (The Bourne Supremacy) is a truncated mess. Who the heck hired the director that turned a cerebral and taut character-based thriller into a piece of car crash stupidity?
The movie seems badly cut from a longer and more interesting piece. What we have left is nothing more than a film-length car chase, and it's boring.
As for the other comment about it being confusing, it isn't confusing at all. The focus is to find Jason Bourne. It goes from point A to point B to point C, etc. with limited dialogue and lots and lots and lots of car chases and crashes. The car chase/crash sequence in Moscow is so absurd, that you lose interest in it. There's even a car chase in Goa (part of the Indian subcontinent) and there are tons of images of Matt Damon walking in and out of subway stations and getting in and out of taxis. The guy does nothing but run and hide and confront and run and hide and confront. He hardly ever talks. Damon isn't called upon to act. He's merely called upon to buy subway tickets.
Any substance in the Robert Ludlum novels is tossed by the wayside. The movie is nothing like the novel on which it's supposedly based.
As for the crazy camera work, well, it's whiplash silly. The constantly-roving camera circles and circles and circles until the audience feels as if it's on a ride at an amusement park. Even when the camera stops moving, it seems to still be moving because the hopeless director cuts and cuts and cuts within scenes. Everything is whiplash fast, but for no purpose. I think everyone was afraid that if they slowed the camera down, people would figure out the movie stinks.
There's no character tension, no love interest (except briefly at the beginning), and virtually no story, unless you consider car chases a story.
The plot is a rehash of the original. The U.S. Government gathers its smart chase team (run by actress Joan Allen, who is called upon to do nothing more than look tight and stricken all the time) and hunt down Jason Bourne.
The ending is flat. By the way, what happened to Julia Stiles character in the movie? She is truly and literally forgotten. Other characters come and go, or are killed or get arrested and then we forget about them.
The Bourne Supremacy is a dud of a movie. I figure it will gross about $50-million overall and then disappear into the DVD bins.