Warning - it's a visual ruin, almost unwatchable

Rating: Null/10 (8 August 2004)

I went to see it with my girlfriend, who's a big Bourne fan, and I had seen Bourne Identity and liked it. But be warned; the camera work is so intentionally jerky that the movie is literally unwatchable. I would have rated it an 8 for the story, but the camera work brought it down a deserved 6 points to a 2. For large parts of it you simply can't get any visual information off the screen. I don't get VR sickness and barely noticed the camera moving in Blair Witch project, but Bourne Supremacy would have been a better movie if half of it was just a black screen with an audio track, for real.
People have described the camera work as "shaky cam" and compared it to Blair Witch project. Let's get this straight - it's way, way beyond that. During large parts of the movie, the image jumps abruptly in random directions every few frames (sometimes every frame). It's like trying to read while being shaken on a roller coaster with really rough track. It's not just in the action scenes - even in peaceful scenes like Bourne out running on a beach, the camera is shaking like it's in a hurricane, for no reason. Additionally, things are often out of focus, and sometimes out of focus and shaking. It's extremely distracting and really gets in the way of the story. The shakiness goes in and out and doesn't follow any sensible plot points. There is a good story in there and good acting, but you can't see much of it, which is a damn shame. I don't know what they were thinking releasing this; it ruins a perfectly good action movie by making it a really hip expensive visual ruin. I simply couldn't make out any of the fight scene or car chase at all. I wish I'd skipped it.