Effective but empty

Rating: 5/10 (8 March 2008)

British drama-documentary specialist Paul Greengrass may have appeared an unlikely choice to direct two installments of the series of films about Jason Bourne, the amnesiac assassin, but his work has been widely praised. And it's easy to see why: his use of hyperactive, fast zooming camera work, frequent cross-cutting and driving music is very effective in ratcheting up the tension; viewers may find themselves physically flinching on more than one occasion. The problem with 'The Bourne Supremacy' is that there is so little content behind the high-energy frontage. In some ways, the tension is fake, because Bourne is more like superman than man, capable of getting out of what would be fatally tight spots for almost anybody else with unfailing skill and dexterity: the fight scenes, for example, are superbly choreographed, but surely bear no resemble to any fight that has actually ever been fought in real life. Likewise, the contemporary relevance of the film's message - the danger of intelligence agencies growing too powerful - is rendered vacuous through its assumption that such an agency would be capable of doing anything - tracking down people instantaneously, for example (or indeed, creating a super spy like Bourne - in fact, anything except recapturing him after losing control). We may be right to fear a world of surveillance, but it's hard to believe it would work with such slick precision. I was also irritated by the pointlessness of Julia Stiles' character, who is repeatedly name-checked in a too-obvious attempt to set her up for a bigger role in the final film. The result is that you may spend two hours of your life on the edge of your seat; but there's nothing to remember afterwards, although geekish fans of European public transport systems may never see another movie in which these feature so prominently.