A Surprising Sequel

Rating: 9/10 (3 April 2011)

The sequel of "The Bourne Identity" takes the character played by Matt Damon out of his nice hiding with Marie (Franka Potente) when a professional killer finds them, accidentally shoots the girl and still goes after the hero. Bourne here goes on a personal vendetta revenging Marie's death but he's also framed in other mysterious schemes, one of them involving the murder of a Russian politic as part of his training with his boss Conklin (Chris Cooper's coolest character of the first film, here appearing in obscure flashbacks). To complicate Bourne's life even more CIA has a new agent (Joan Allen) tracking down all of his steps with the help of people who were trying to reach him in the first hunt, the Treadstone Operation (characters played by Brian Cox, Julia Stiles and Gabriel Mann).
"The Bourne Supremacy" has many surprises, plot twists filled with action, thrills and adrenaline and a good story, always turning away from what we wanted to see but fulfilling our desire to see what happens next (the huge blow was Marie's death, certainly I wasn't expecting that).
Change of direction means also change of style, and in this case not so good one. Doug Liman, director of the first installment and producer of this one, steps aside and gets substituted by Paul Greengrass, a more dramatic director with a approach with a documentary style, now well-known for his Academy Award nomination for "United 93". If the first film was more like an adventure film with many cool moments, the sequel gets a more dramatic and tense tone (Thumbs Up for that) but the editing ruins the viewing a little bit. Some of the action sequences lost their excitement butchered in the editing room, and also the hand held cameras that seemed more suitable to film an earthquake than this film. Greengrass controlled his editing team better in the third film as we all know, Christopher Rouse won an Oscar for his brilliant work in that, it resembles a little bit this one but somehow he managed to make things better (also comes the fact that Richard Pearson helped him in the second film and not in the third, so there must be something wrong here).
Besides this minor complaint, the film goes very well although I kept wondering where's the grand finale of it? Something more exciting or interesting could be made of the last minutes of "The Bourne Supremacy" and that almost unfinished conclusion ruined my first viewing of it, but then I forgot about that because somehow this film gives us what we want, it is well made, take us to Europe, India, and U.S., has great sequences (the fight in the house; Bourne awesome tactics of fighting and escape), so what more I could ask? Well, basically nothing, and gladly they made "The Bourne Ultimatum" that was the perfect conclusion of a great series.
In terms of casting, Damon goes very well again in the main role; Joan Allen plays a brilliant character (but she doesn't have the same bite Chris Cooper had in the first film playing a similar role); Karl Urban playing one of the villains was extremely hot and menacing at the same time; and at last there's the dark-obscured-sad flashbacks of Cooper playing Conklin in an uncredited appearance which was very relevant to the story but they could make these flashbacks sequences way better than just blurry the image. I guess that there are still people out there who want to know who was that guy.
If you want a surprising thriller, with fantastic action sequences and some solid acting this is the film you've always looked for. To me, it's very good but a little bit inferior than the previous and posterior films of Bourne series. 9/10