Damn fine popcorn spy flick (minor spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (8 September 2004)

I've always been a fan of spy movies, for the same reason I like baseball, probably, to watch something that's complex and thoroughly inconsequential at the same time. To just sit back with some nachos, ice cream bon-bons, suspend all disbelief and have my brain tickled. Bourne Supremacy successfully delivers.
Now, Bourne Identity was about a mystery in which we are digging deeper and deeper along with the main character. Bourne Supremacy cannot repeat this feat, nor should it, so the movie opts instead to be quite transparent about the plot and concentrate on the road towards payback. I really do enjoy how Mr. Bourne is ALWAYS a step ahead of the CIA pack, I smile at his unbelievable competence. I love the cosmopolitan settings in which the film takes place, more so than on the original Bourne Identity. And while not entirely able to disregard the laws of nature, I truly enjoyed the car chase, the first to acknowledge a post-"Matrix Reloaded" cinematic language, as the intense crescendo that it is.
The only thing that put me off a bit was the editing (which worked fine for me elsewhere in the film), during the fight sequence, MUCH more thrillingly executed in Bourne Identity, where you can clearly observe the choreography of two precise, relentless killing machines going for each other's throats.
Yes, Bourne Identity is a better, smarter, sharper film, as Doug Lyman is a superior director to Paul Greengrass, but Bourne Supremacy is pretty damn good, and quite a bit of pokerfaced escapist fun, to be taken with a grain of salt. Exactly what a spy flick should be. By the way, for a more serious example of the genre, check out 1973's "The Day Of the Jackal", a superb piece of intelligent cinema.
I am enthusiastic about the final installment of this adaptation of Robert Ludlum's trilogy, "The Bourne Ultimatum", and I seriously hope that the studios will be wise enough to call it quits when that one hits the theaters.