The glue of the trilogy, but it is a shaky-cam mess

Rating: 6/10 (13 April 2017)

Paul Greengrass takes over the series as director, and very much feels like he cut his teeth with this one.
Despite being freely off the grid and with the head of the insidious Treadstone project killed, Bourne believes the worst is over. But when a Russian assassin takes away the only thing left in Bourne's life, he thinks Treadstone is after him once again. But the plot is even thicker than he can know
Even perhaps a decade later, my opinion of The Bourne Supremacy has not changed in the slightest. I love this trilogy, I even have the steelbook edition, but Supremacy really doesn't sit well with me and not just by comparison of its far superior (no pun intended) siblings.
I love me some consistency, and the trilogy delivers that in spades. John Powell returns with an electrifying twist on his original score for Bourne Identity, and even Moby's Extreme Ways returns for the end credits, Matt Damon and Brian Cox reprise their roles very well. In fact I would say the latter steals the show, delivering a frail, cowardly yet sadly sympathetic antagonist, and his scenes with newcomer Joan Allen are probably the most effective for me. The film still has that edgy atmosphere whenever Bourne is stalking around Europe, America and Russia in this globe-trotting sequel, the tension is still real.
Yet the editing is atrocious!
I really mean it. 2004 must have been when shaky-cam became a thing because Supremacy's action sequences are really, really bad. Not even restricted to the action sequences, even regular tracking shots and panning shots are wobbling all over the place. I appreciate some of it, to invoke kinetic action and uncontrolled rage (representing Bourne's own survival instincts) but you have to dial it back. All I tend to take away from this film is 1. the film's main action set piece, a car chase around Moscow, is heavily shaky-cam, and 2. this is suffers from second installment syndrome.
To watch Supremacy alone is pointless. At one hour thirty-seven minutes it flies by, none of the returning characters are given time to re-establish themselves, new characters are barely touched on. Without the first film's great pacing and establishing and the third films incredible payoff, Supremacy is just noise.
There are moments of cleverness that I enjoy; the chase Bourne makes from Police that involves running across two train tracks, off a bridge, onto a boat only to double-back back onto the bridge again from underneath? That was impressive. That and how Bourne takes control of the situation from underneath the organisation hunting him. It is a fantastic "you got owned" scene that does so much to empower our hero and validate every other characters' fear of him.
Of course, I said earlier I love this trilogy. Supremacy is redeemed by its successor, and Supremacy is the glue that the series relies upon, take it out and it falls apart. But as a singular experience I really don't think highly of it in cinematography terms.