Near flawless

Rating: 8/10 (29 July 2004)

Action movies are supposed to make your heart race and your adrenaline glands roar into action. "The Bourne Supremacy" does exactly that, with its centerpiece being an insane car chase, certainly the best one I've ever seen.
I say it's near flawless only because the camera work was nausea-inducing. Of course for scenes of intense action it is customary to have a shaky, hand-held camera, but not for every scene in the movie, for God's sake. It wasn't so much nausea-inducing as headache-inducing, as my eyes got tired of flicking around to follow the action.
Otherwise, apart from a few believability problems, I couldn't find anything wrong. My problems include: how can you get shot in the shoulder and not have a hole in your coat? How can you get broadsided in a car by another one at high speed and not even get sidelined with whiplash? How can a cruddy old taxi outpace brand-new, souped-up Mercedes-Benzes? But that's all OK - I should know by now, the hero of an action movie is invincible.
"The Bourne Supremacy" keeps the adrenaline flowing and the knuckles white almost constantly. The cast is flawless - nobody dragged the rest down. If you want your movie to be successful, you need a really good lead actor, and that's exactly what Matt Damon is. He balances the troubled human and the trained superhuman with amazing ease and naturalness. He is equally at home being frightened and confused as being ruthless and efficient.
"The Bourne Supremacy", as a spy action-thriller, is a refreshing change from the Bond franchise. The main difference here is that the hero is not a suave, handsome, martini- drinking, womanizing, suit-wearing, British assassin, but a CIA deserter who has changed his ways and only wants to settle down for a quiet life with the woman he loves, and who is haunted by the nightmares and visions induced by his past. In short, he's human, and that makes us pay more attention to him and care about him. Of course neither Bond nor Bourne makes mistakes, and they both like to drive and run really fast, but hey - sometimes breaking too far from the mold is bad.
My rating is 8/10. I really hate coming out of a great movie with a headache just because some camera-person has a shaky hand.