The Bourne Supremacy

2004
Staring: Matt Damon, Brian Cox, Julia Stiles, Franka Potente, Karl Urban, Joan Allen, Marton Csokas, Gabriel Mann, Tomas Arana.
Director: Paul Greengrass.

This is perhaps one of the better sequels ever made, the Bourne Supremacy only builds on the foundations set up from the first film.

Leaving off more or less from where the first film left off, Jason’s still on the run. Just when he thinks things are safe for once, someone targets him. At the same time in Berlin a CIA operation goes horribly wrong, and Jason is the prime suspect. Who has set up Jason and why did they go after him after all this time? Bourne is back for revenge, and won’t take any prisoners.

I found the end footrace and tunnel chase sequences to be one of the best chase scenes in the last decade.

I’ll admit that the stylistic differences between Doug Liman and Paul Greengrass are apparent from the get go – one has a much more smooth style of filmmaking while the other goes straight for the steadycam “gritty” filmmaking. Personally for the Bourne films neither is better than the other, probably because the storytelling is so damn good.

There were a lot of people who were enraged by the steadycam work in this film. They claimed to feel “sick” after seeing this. I mean, is this 1903 where people got sick from seeing the scenery moving in the background of the “The Great Train Robbery”? I suppose 15 years of watching Law and Order – and more recently 24 kind of made me completely ignore this entirely. It’s not hard to follow, and it’s not “vomit inducing” you drama queens.

****/*****