Cross-posted to Urban Vancouver, for whom I’m doing movie reviews.
In Oscar parties around the world, no one ever pays attention to the Sound
and Sound Editing awards. During those awards–inevitably announced back-to-back–
party-goers wax bitchy about formal wear and moon over whoever is in the front
row. This apathy explains why my friends looked at me funny when we walked out
of The Bourne Supremacy and I said, "wow, great sound design."
More on this later.
When we left Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) at the end of The Bourne Identity,
he had pitched up in Marie Kreutz’s (Franka Potente) scooter shop on the Mediterranean.
They embrace, and look forward to a simple life of anonymity and moped rentals.
Two years have passed when The Bourne Supremacy opens, and things haven’t
quite gone as planned. They’ve moved around a lot, and now they’re hiding out
in Goa, India. Bourne continues to be plagued by feverish, half-remembered dreams
of his past life as a government assassin. Soon enough, Bourne’s history catches
up with him, and he’s driven to seek vengeance on the agency that made him.
Back at the CIA, there’s somebody new in charge of managing the Bourne problem.
Joan Allen is Pamela Landy, a ball-breaking senior agent turning up too many
skeletons from the agency’s closet. The CIA feels decidedly corporate these
days–Landy and her superior Ward Abbott (a huffy Brian Cox) have a lot of shouting
matches while men in suits look on dourly. If you haven’t seen the first film–which
I definitely recommend–you’ll be a little lost as to who all the players are.
The film doesn’t help you in this respect, and does a poor job of introducing
new characters into the mix. Frankly, the plot is a little thin on the ground,
and seems to revolve around a pretty meagre sum of money from the CIA’s perspective.
Julia Stiles shows up once again as the feckless Nicky, but she’s only in one
sequence. She’s an obvious plot device, which is an upgrade from Identity.
Her presence in both films is inexplicable, as she’s an A-list star playing
a C-list role. It all smacks of a contract she agreed to long before her rise
to super-stardom. Damon has come a long way since Good Will Hunting.
He’s convincingly haunted as Bourne, and does well with a script that offers
precious little in terms of dialogue.
Like its predecessor The Bourne Identity, Supremacy is a very well-crafted
film. From the cinematography through to the costumes and set designs, it shows
a collective commitment to quality work. The film has a deeply genuine feel
to it, and though it’s a travelogue of sorts, it’s an unflinching one. India
looks dusty and impoverished, Russia looks grim and crumbling. When Jason Bourne
falls from a bridge onto a garbage scow and injures his knee, we watch him limp
his way through the rest of the film–there are no quick fixes or bionic men
here.
I do have one quibble. If you’ve seen a trailer or ad for the movie, there’s
a scene in which Bourne watches a CIA office in Berlin through a sniper rifle’s
scope from an adjacent rooftop. He’s on the phone to Landy, who’s in the office,
and freaks everybody out when he reveals that he’s watching them. However, the
next time we see Landy, she’s standing with her back to the same windows with
daylight pouring in. If a deadly assassin was angry with my organization, and
demonstrated that he could see into my office, I’d close the blinds. Heck, I’d
move the entire operation to the middle of the subbasement.
Several reviewers have complained about director Paul Greengrass’s shaky camera.
While he sometimes seems to emulate Spielberg’s Normandy landing, it didn’t
bother me. Greengrass’s action sequences are frantic; his fight scenes are the
antithesis of the choreographed dances in The Matrix. When Damon confronts
another agent, their fight is frantic–a scrambling, desperate scurry to kill
the other combatant.
Which brings us back to the sound design, which is a thing of beauty. During
the aforementioned fight scene, Bourne attempts to strangle his attacker with
an electrical cord. The watery wheezing of the agent fills the theatre, keeps
you up at night. Near the end of the film, there’s a lovely, confessional scene
which occurs in near-complete silence–the lack of background noise or music
underscores the seriousness of the discussion. In fact, music is used carefully
throughout the film. The soundtrack goes largely unnoticed, which, as a rule,
is what’s supposed to happen.
Generally, The Bourne Supremacy is a darker and more relentless movie
than Identity. As with all the best trilogies (Robert Ludlum wrote a
third book, The Bourne Ultimatum), the second film is the most introspective
and gloomy of the three. For this reason, and the dubious plot, it’s not quite
the movie that its predecessor was. Still, the craftsmanship and decent performances
make it better than most action movies you’ll see this summer.
DarrenBarefoot.com 