I used to have some sort of unspoken deal with myself to never watch the Jason Bourne movies. The idea didn't seem too far fetched at the time, I never really liked spy thrillers and the aesthetics of the series have been rubbing me the wrong way since the release of the very first trailer. All it took was Josie and about six hours of dead air in our weekend to break a decade long promise I made to myself. I'm not mad though. I'm happy I've seen them because now I can tell people why I don't like them without pulling reasons out of my ass. THE BOURNE SUPREMACY is the first movie of the series directed by Paul Greengrass. There are a couple images scattered through it, yet overall it's all po-tah-to/po-tay-to to me.
Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) seems to have retired. He's been laying low in India with his girlfriend Marie (Franka Potente, minding his own business and living the happily ever after. An intruder (Karl Urban) eventually crashes his party and forces Bourne back in action. Somebody is trying to frame him for a double murder in Berlin, Germany. Turns out there are more keys to his past hidden behind this double cross. Bourne has been to Berlin before, to execute and off-the-books mission for his ex-employers. While an unfair murder accusation is hanging over his head, Jason Bourne finds out he has to make amends for something long buried in the past.
I've previously talked about the action scenes in Bourne movies. There is another aspect to them that THE BOURNE SUPREMACY makes clear. They seemed to have been written by a droning, uninspired Nyquil addict on a binge. They have no life. It's all kick-punch-kick-punch-kill, kick-punch-kick-punch-kill. At one point, Bourne rolls up a magazine to defend himself against a knife attacker and the scene jumped at my face because it had something specific to it. Action movies need a sense of identity that go beyond aesthetic signature and THE BOURNE SUPREMACY doesn't have that. Take Sylvester Stallone's beautiful mess COBRA, for example. You remember it for its most outlandish details. I'm sure you can't single out a Bourne car chase or shootout, but you all remember Marion Cobretti shooting bad guys all to hell, standing in the back of a pickup truck.
I'll tell you though, Joan Allen is an underrated talent.
I'll admit THE BOURNE SUPREMACY has the best plot of all Matt Damon lead Jason Bourne movies. The mystery aspects are legit and putting the pieces together is not all that obvious, so that was fun. Did you know the sound editing for the Jason Bourne movies received several awards? It's a technical aspect of movies that eludes most viewers, but that can be understood with a simple exercise. Kill the volume of your television, turn on the subtitles and try to understand THE BOURNE SUPREMACY. The clipped segment crash into each other like drunk drivers in key action scenes and it is hell to understand what the fuck is going on without sound effects. I don't believe sound editing improved the Jason Bourne movies, but I believe it prevented them from being a monumental disaster.
If you worship the Jason Bourne movies, I'm sorry if my reviews made you feel stupid. It was not my itention. I don't think anybody loved these movies to death, though except maybe director Paul Greengrass, who seems to be his own biggest fan. I can see how viewers were indifferent to it or thought it was a decent time-killer, but I don't see how Jason Bourne can become an object of worship, at least if you haven't read the Robert Ludlum novels *. There are better ways to invest your precious time, even if it means not watching a movie at all. Maybe the real legacy of Jason Bourne movies is to make your realize your time on Earth is too valuable to spend on self-absorbed mediocrity.
* I'll give Ludlum that much credit even the novels of his I read left me colder than Antartica in February.
If you worship the Jason Bourne movies, I'm sorry if my reviews made you feel stupid. It was not my itention. I don't think anybody loved these movies to death, though except maybe director Paul Greengrass, who seems to be his own biggest fan. I can see how viewers were indifferent to it or thought it was a decent time-killer, but I don't see how Jason Bourne can become an object of worship, at least if you haven't read the Robert Ludlum novels *. There are better ways to invest your precious time, even if it means not watching a movie at all. Maybe the real legacy of Jason Bourne movies is to make your realize your time on Earth is too valuable to spend on self-absorbed mediocrity.
* I'll give Ludlum that much credit even the novels of his I read left me colder than Antartica in February.