Bourne Supremacy = Bourne Identity - Good Bits

Rating: 5/10 (19 June 2005)

A lot of people saw the Bourne Identity as an edgy new approach to the whole spy film - more realistic, less glitzy, a lot more grit and conforming to a far more minimalist approach. Very little dialogue, just a lot of tension and suspense with a lot of action.
In many ways - the Supremacy follows this same kind of style in a similar fashion but misses out the crucial elements that made the original so great to watch.
First off - the action scenes are likely to induce epileptic fits in some viewers. The movement and cutting is THAT fast. In the original Bourne could explode into action and sure the editing wasn't great but it gave the desired effect. Here it just looks as though they couldn't be bothered spending the time filming an action scene worth watching, which is greatly to the detriment of the film.
Secondly, Bourne is essentially on his own for the whole movie. As he doesn't talk to himself and we don't hear any of his thoughts, there is barely any dialogue except for the banal ramblings of the people out to get Bourne and the whole thing gets rather too much into the generic government conspiracy type vein.
Thirdly and finally - it's just so boring to watch Bourne run around looking somewhere between constipated and angry for the whole film. He doesn't have anyone to confide in, to unload on. So he becomes a rather dull and uninteresting, if ass-kicking character.
Then magically all evil-doers are taken care of, Bourne escapes again and so on, to live on in sequels to come. All in all the film just feels as though someone copied and pasted from the original but without any real thought or attention to detail. Hence you have a cookie-cutter sequel that lacks the charm of the original.
10