excess

Rating: Null/10 (26 July 2004)

The Bourne Supremacy is a real movie. It isn't a real good movie, or a real bad movie, but it is a real movie. Unlike Mission: Impossible or latter-day Bond movies, it takes a secret agent and plops him down in a fairly gritty, believable world that, while not as nuanced as a John le Carre novel, at least allows us to perceive the action as taking place on the same Earth we inhabit.
30 years ago this would not be a notable accomplishment, but in 2004 you have to be thankful for any mainstream summertime movie that isn't a ludicrous cartoon from start to finish.
At its best, The Bourne Supremacy is a taut, deadpan thriller that doesn't get too hung up on genre expectations. As the film wears on, this becomes less true, until the Moscow finale, where it degenerates into the kind of hyperactive summertime roller-coaster that leaves you wondering if you could get away with checking your cell phone messages underneath all the explosions.
Unfortunately, despite the movie's pluses, it is ultimately somewhat spoiled by its overly hip camera-work and editing. The camera employs the kind of stylized hand-held look that television's "Homicide" brought to the masses, and while at times it works to good effect, more often it is tiresome and distracting.
This footage is edited together with an overabundance of style that at first dazzles, then irritates, and finally nauseates (literally). With a seemingly endless supply of flashframe images, jump-cutting, and whip-pan transitions, The Bourne Supremacy bears more than a passing resemblance to the re-training film Stanley Kubrick subjected Alex to in A Clockwork Orange. By the climactic chase scene in Moscow, your eyes are rolling back in your head in epileptic fashion, while the abrasive sound effects -- doing their best to keep pace with the visual assault -- peel your ears off your head.
The editing in The Bourne Supremacy is only possible because of the ease with which computer-based film editing tools like Avid allow the editor to endlessly manipulate the footage. The ultimately vulgar effect of this overworking of the footage teaches a lesson: just because a computer makes it possible, doesn't mean it's a good idea.