Inferior "Supremacy"

Rating: 2/10 (2 February 2006)

Sequel is far inferior to the first, "The Bourne Identity", which although bore only a little resemblance to the book by Ludlum, was an excellent, legitimately gripping thriller.
The film fails mainly not because of the story but because of Greengrass's frenetic, incompetent direction.
Everything that takes place is subordinate to the style of the film, which, for me, continually distracted from plot, action, and dialog. I am referring to the shaky hand-held camera, which by this time is about as cutting-edge as a 1980s Docker's commercial. That, along with spastic editing, are the main culprits. I wish directors would realize that nowadays, a movie shot with the hand-held just gives it (in most cases) a cheesy TV drama feel. Obviously, the intent is to make dialog scenes more interesting and action scenes seem "confusingly" real.
The shaky camera is unrelenting and without respite, even being used during non-action scenes so much that it becomes something worse than a self-conscious, pretentious gimmick...it just becomes an endless irritation.
Director Greengrass doesn't seem to get it...the blurry scenes and split-second herky-jerky glimpses we are given are so confusing, and impart such little visual information to the viewer, that it is impossible to tell what is going on and therefore, impossible to get drawn into a scene's tension. So instead of making a scene more exciting, the annoying technique makes it far less so.
A perfect example is the fight scene between Bourne and an assassin, which can be compared to Jason's battle in his Paris apartment in the original. In the original movie, that fight scene was tense and exciting. In the sequel, it was like trying to watch two men fighting while lit by a strobe light, from the vantage point of a whizzing, out-of-control merry-go-round.
Ditto for the car chase scenes, which may as well have been viewed from the trunk of Jason's car for all we could tell was happening.
SPOILER HERE Another big disappointment was the killing off of Franka Potente's character early in the film. She's a fun actress to watch and was a huge part of the first Bourne movie. Further, it has become an all too familiar gimmick in films like this, where the filmmakers are concerned about the hero getting tied up with one woman, in spite of the fact that somehow Ludlum was able to make it work with his books.
Disappointing all the way around, even to the redundant and unoriginal use of the same song by Moby for the closing credits that was used in the first film. What, they couldn't find a different Moby song to use?