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MOVIE CRITIQUE:
I wasn't that big a fan of "The Bourne Identity"(2002), as I felt that Matt Damon was too lightweight for the
role and that the filming techniques appear to be a conscious effort to obfuscate his seeming lack of martial arts expertise.
Well, the annoying handicam filming techniques are still in use in "The Bourne Supremacy," but Damon is also
more mature and this story is a far better one than the first with its complex character interactions along with the Hitchcockian
twist of Bourne (Damon) being pulled out of his self imposed retirement in India because he has been falsely placed by a Russian
agent at the scene of a crime 4,000 miles away in Berlin.
Whereas before Bourne was a killing machine for some unknown reason, now he is a killing machine for a very justifiable
reason, actually two very justifiable reasons. His fingerprint has falsely been planted at the scene of a crime during which
$20 million dollars of CIA money disappeared. Now the CIA is after him to find out what happened and why he was involved in
this apparent heist.
Worse yet, the perpetrator of this plant of false evidence, Kirill (Karl Urban), a Russian secret service agent also on
the take from an oil oligarch named Jarda (Marton Csokas), has been instructed to complete the circle of any evidence connecting
Jarda to the missing $20 million by having Bourne killed so that the proof of his involvement, or lack thereof, will go to
his grave with him.
Kirill's assassination effort in India goes terribly awry when he kills Marie (Franka Potente), Bourne's love interest
and the person solely responsible for bringing him back from the life of a merciless killing machine to something resembling
a more normal human being.
Now I am a great fan of Franka Potente for her starring roles in two movies by the German director, Tom Tikwer. As such,
I hated to see her depart her appealing role so early in this film, but at least her death gives Bourne a huge incentive to
return from a life of quiet introspection (and far too many nightmares) while living on an idyllic beach on the coast of India
back to the world of a kill or be killed spy operative.
"The Bourne Supremacy" is the kind of movie where the CIA right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing.
CIA sector head Pamela Landy (Joan Allen), in a wonderfully fleshed out role, is called on the carpet for that missing $20
million in her botched covert operation. She doesn't have the clearance to find out who the crime scene fingerprint belongs
to, and her immediate superior back at the Langley headquarters, Ward Abbott (Brian Cox), who is one year away from retirement,
seems understandably reluctant to dig too deeply into this mess.
Nothing much would have happened until a justifiably angry Bourne out for answers and promising a vendetta of revenge
against his former associates turns up out of the blue when he passes through customs in Naples, Italy. Knowing Bourne as
they do, the answers had better come soon and they had better come fast. There will not be a lot of time to sit on the mystery
of his whereabouts as he will certainly find them a lot sooner than they will find him.
"The Bourne Supremacy" moves along at a rapid clip as Bourne chases his ex-comrades all over Europe from Berlin
to Moscow. I loved the interaction between Bourne and Landy as she finds herself time after time in the gun sights of Bourne's
rifle so capably exhibited in this movie's poster (see above).
Worse for her, Bourne always seems to be one or two steps ahead of her and the assumptions of the moment begin to unravel
when things do not go according to plan and the wrong man is mysteriously murdered. All the high tech gadgetry that the CIA
brings to bear on this case cannot explain how this murder happened and at some point Landy has to begin to suspect that someone
on the inside, on their side, is not to be trusted.
All of the characters in this movie are well envisioned and they each flesh out their roles with the result being that
"The Bourne Supremacy" is an intelligent spy movie much above the ordinary along with being great fun to watch.
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MOVIE SYNOPSIS:
Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) and Marie (Franka Potente) have left Europe behind for the idyllic life at a beach house located
far away from the rest of the Occidental world in the small city of Goa, India. Bourne jogs up and down the beach every day
like a normal person on vacation from America and Marie does her thing as well, which mostly is to humanize Bourne. This has
been a great personal effort on her part and is one that is beginning to show solid results. Bourne's major remaining problem
besides the questions about his actual identity is a recurring nightmare about his murder of a man and a woman in a Berlin
hotel.
Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) has taken over as the CIA sector head in Berlin from Ted Conklin (Chris Cooper), who had been
murdered several years before. However, her prime objective at the moment is the current case at hand in which she has put
her personal reputation on the line along with $20 million of CIA seed money to obtain some critically necessary information
about Russian intelligence. She assures her immediate superior, Ward Abbott (Brian Cox) that this covert operation will be
highly successful.
Kirill (Karl Urban) is a highly placed member of Russian intelligence, but he is really working both sides of the Russian
street as he is also in the pay of "Jarda," (Marton Csokas), a very wealthy and secretive Russian oil baron. Jarda
has apparently cooked up this operation which has then been dangled in front of Pamela Landy, the result being her request
for that $20 million. Now Jarda's man, Kirill, is waiting in Berlin for the drop of the $20 million so that he can abscond
with the cash.
Kirill outsmarts Landy and escapes with the cash hoard. However, before he blows up the building to hide the evidence,
he plants a fingerprint known to be Bourne's on an electrical junction box to implicate the long absent spy. Back in Moscow,
Jarda pays Kirill a substantial sum of money for his efforts, but he also instructs Kirill that his job is only half done
and that he must now kill Bourne to protect the fact that this has all been a setup.
Landy finds the fingerprint, but she is astonished to find out that it belongs to one of their own agents, an agent who
is so highly placed and so secretive that she does not even have the clearance to ascertain who it belongs to. Flying back
to Langley, she is dressed down by Abbott for botching the job and losing the $20 million, but at least he allows her to find
out that the print belongs to Jason Bourne, a former agent for a now closed covert operation. Neither Abbott nor Landy can
explain how Bourne, who had seemed to have fallen off the edge of the world for the last several years, has suddenly turned
up at this drop site in Berlin.
Kirill soon flies from Moscow to Goa and immediately goes into the customs offices with a picture of Bourne claiming that
he is a cousin just arrived to inform him of a death in the family. Of course, the trusting bureaucrat gives him all the information
that he needs.
Jason and Marie are driving into Goa for a normal day of shopping and running errands when Bourne spies Kirill for the
second time in the space of minutes. Once would be a coincidence that could be dismissed, but seeing this "fish out of
water" Caucasian twice in the space of less than an hour resurrects the subconscious mind of this killer spy.
The chase is on and Kirill is soon racing though the side streets of Goa in hot pursuit of Bourne. The two cars pass each
other on a busy thoroughfare in close enough proximity so that Kirill can get off several shots from his handgun. Marie, who
is driving, is mortally wounded and their car punches through a guard rail and falls into the river.
Bourne tries to resuscitate Marie by blowing air into her mouth, but even underwater he can tell that she is so unresponsive
that she must be dead. The car sinks to the bottom of the river as Kirill watches from among a crowd of nearby onlookers.
Meanwhile, Bourne has swum to the side of a ship which allows him to leave the water unseen. He watches as the Indian police
later pull the drenched car with Marie's dead body still inside out of the river.
By then Kirill is long gone, thoroughly convinced that both Bourne and Marie, a person unknown to him but unfortunately
"collateral damage" in the kill or be killed covert spy trade, have both been killed either by his bullets or by
drowning in their car while it lay on the bottom of the river. He returns to Moscow to collect the second part of his pay
package from Jarda.
With nothing left to keep him in India and thoughts of revenge for the death of his beloved Marie occupying his mind,
Jason Bourne heads back to Europe. His immediate mission is to try to find out why all of this is happening just now and what
is going on with this agent who has chased him all the way to India.
He passes in plain view through customs in Naples, Italy, with a passport registered to his trade name, Jason Bourne.
Bourne knows the score and the routine. This will set off alarms from Berlin to Washington. They will know that he will soon
be at the sector headquarters in Berlin if they don't stop him, and they will have very little time to head him off before
he does get there.
Pamela Landy gathers the "troops" in Berlin so that they can make plans to apprehend Bourne. With her is her
trusted associate, Danny Zorn (Gabriel Mann), and Nicky (Julia Stiles), a low level associate who headed a program integrating
spies like Bourne into the lives of Parisian college students when she was working in Paris. Landy thinks that she will be
helpful as she knows Bourne and she must be familiar with his tactics.
However, Nicky is smarter than this. She knows Bourne well enough to fear him as a rogue agent of almost mythical abilities
who will be unstoppable in his efforts to kill any or all of them or to get whatever he wants now that he has reentered the
European spy theater.
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