Better than the first film, intense, gritty and in your face.

Rating: Null/10 (27 August 2004)

I saw The Bourne Identity on PPV in a motel in Memphis when it first came out and enjoyed it. The sequel however, for once, (Empire Strikes Back not withstanding,) is better. Much better.
I won't give the game away but the story is mostly intelligent and intelligible but above all what makes the film work is its grittiness and intensity. Shot without the use of Steadicams and made to look like it's been filmed by DV cameras, the film has the wobbly camera work we saw with This Life or 24. As a result, you don't have the gloss you normally get with a TV show, you feel instead like you are there in the room with the characters.
No more is this the case than in some of the fight scenes. They're frantic, urgent and in your face. So much so that it's almost too in your face. It's not stylised like a glamorous Bond or Matrix style fight, but bloody and dirty. As a result they're over quite quickly but you get a whiff of authenticity which is rare and indeed quite scary. The same is true of the car chase at the end - which owes much to the Gene Hackman chase in The French Connection - but again that famous 70s scene pales into comparison with the directness and intensity of the scene in this film.
Mark Kermode wrote in the New Statesman that the Bond films could learn a lot from this style if they want to reinvigorate the franchise (although I'm not sure they need to as each film just keeps on making more money,) and I'd endorse that. The Bourne Supremacy (silly title which has nothing to do with the film,) is gritty and real - a throwback to some of the 60s and 70s espionage films like The Odessa File or The Ipcress File... and that's no bad thing at all.