The Bourne Supremacy

When I first saw Bourne Identity, I thought it was okay, but I was mostly distracted by the massive departures from the source material, Ludlum's novel. Having enjoyed this classic of spy fiction, I found it disappointing how quickly and severely the movie plot deviated from the book. I was expecting it to be sort of dumbed down and simplified, but I had expected (or hoped) that it would retain some of the elements that made it so interesting in the first place. Before I went to see Bourne Supremacy, I rented Bourne Identity on DVD. By this time, I had come to terms with my disappointment, my expectations were gone, and without those distractions, I was able to appreciate the movie on its own merits. The Bourne Identity essentially took Ludlum's premise of an amnesiac agent on the run with an innocent woman, hunted by his own agency, and created a new plot around "Swingers" and "Go!" director Doug Liman's conception of the character. In doing so, a major element of the book's plot, the hunt for the assassin, Carlos the Jackal, was eliminated.

Plotwise, the Bourne Identity was kind of cliched. But what separated it from the pack was Jason Bourne. Even in a situation of the greatest vulnerability, amnesia which robbed him of his very identity, Bourne was a badass. He was intelligent, resourceful, and determined. He was programmed that way. There were two key elements to his personality, which distinguished him from your average action hero: he was atypically cool under pressure, and he always knew the right thing to do. He wasn't just "I don't know, I'm making this up as I go" cool, or like James Bond suave in a tux. Whenever the pressure would mount, the situation became tight, Bourne would turn into a machine. You see it on his face in his first action scene. He's trying to sleep on a park bench, when a couple of Swiss police officers come up on him. He's all stressed, "I lost my papers, I just need to get some sleep," but the instant one of the cops pokes him with his nightstick, Bourne's face shuts off like a lightswitch. He's not just cool, he's cold. The same thing happens when he's being chased in the embassy a couple of scenes later. He's trying to climb up to the roof from a broken fire escape, when the fire escape comes loose, causing him to slip and drop his bag several stories to the pavement below. This would be the moment to cut to a reaction shot of Bourne thinking, "whoa!" But instead he just looks down to acknowledge his bag, then tries a different plan. Matter-of-fact. That's Bourne.

Bourne could Kali someone's ass if he needed to, and take them out in 5 seconds. But even more often, he got out of his jam by using his brain. We know by watching him that he could shoot his way out, but he doesn't need to. When he walks into a situation, he knows immediately what his major threats will be, and all of his avenues of escape. He knows the right thing to do and he doesn't make mistakes. And when something appears to go wrong, it's all part of Bourne's plan. He tricks his former handler at Treadstone to meet him, then acts as though he's freaked out by the fact that the guy didn't come alone. But it's all part of Bourne's scheme to follow them back to Treadstone where he can take them on his own terms. Bourne always knows what to do.

*** SPOILERS ***

When I went to see Bourne Supremacy, I didn't have any expectations regarding it's adherence to the novel. The first movie disabused me of that notion, especially since the part of the novel's plot that it completely ignored, the hunt for Carlos the Jackal, was the part which tied the trilogy together as a whole. But I was still disappointed by the movie. It just didn't live up to the first movie's vision of Jason Bourne. First of all, they killed Marie. I mean, hasn't the whole "they killed his [insert loved one here], now he wants revenge" thing been done to death? Is Hollywood simply incapable of creating a hero who isn't a loner? Ludlum's novels had Marie surviving through all three, I'm sure the filmmakers could have worked something out if they had tried. It's not that I object to Marie dying, I just think that the character could have been used better than simply killing her off to jump start the plot. I mean, I would think that simply having a renewed effort to kill Bourne would be enough to get him moving.

There are some promising moments early in the movie, such as Bourne using his "Jason Bourne" passport to enter the country. Of course, it is flagged and he is detained, but this is all part of his plan. He is not only sending Treadstone big, ol' "kiss you ass goodbye now, because there won't be a later for you" warning sign, but by forcing his former warders to contact the airport security guys, he gets his next big clue as to where to go. Joan Allen's character mentions the two murders in Berlin that Bourne has been framed for, but Bourne's still-fragmented memory makes the association with an assassination he performed years ago, his first mission, one that was performed off the record on behalf of a corrupt CIA official.

But then things go off the rail. He contacts the only other remaining Treadstone assassin, other than himself. Why? There is no point to this, and it doesn't advance the plot significantly. It seems like a thin excuse for a cool, Kali fight scene, which is shot with a camera so shaky, you'd think the cameraman was epileptic. So in the movie's big Kali fight, you can't even see what's going on. The sound effects let you know that there's a fight, and by the time the camera stops shaking, Matt Damon is the one still standing, so you figure he won. It's kind of a shame because you know they probably worked hard on the fight, trying to outdo the agent-on-agent action in the first movie, and the fighting itself appeared to be the scene's sole raison d'être.

One disappointment is that Bourne's singular cool seems to have gone out the window in this movie. Perhaps director Paul Greengrass didn't share Doug Liman's vision of the character, or wanted to make him more accessible to the audience. Whatever the case, emotion was written on Bourne's face in each of the action scenes. I'm not saying he was breaking down into tears or anything, but he had lost that signature coldness. I missed it.

I also missed Bourne's smartness. The action seemed more important than the plot as Bourne seemed to make poor or pointless decisions for the sake of leading into some kind of action movie formula. Later in the movie, Bourne goes to the hotel where his performed his first killings, to see the room where it happened and jog his memory. The moment he checks in and gives the desk clerk his passport, you know that the authorities will know where he is, and come after him. I was watching, thinking, "okay, what's Bourne got planned now? Why is he drawing the cops to the hotel?" Ten minutes later, the answer was revealed to me: he drew them there because, in his strategic, programmed, super-agent mind, he knew the movie needed a chase scene. All he wanted was a look at the room where he made his first kill. I'm sure that even you can think of a few different ways a super agent of Bourne's caliber could sneak in without alerting the entire law-enforcement community of the city of Berlin. But then we wouldn't have that all-important chase scene, would we? Hmph. Some agent you'd make.

Part of the reason Bourne "recruits" Marie in the first movie is that he knows that those hunting him will be looking for a lone male, and as long as he was with Marie, they'd look like a couple. (This fact is made even more explicit in one of the deleted scenes on the DVD.) She is a disguise for him. Because Jason Bourne is smart. Or he was, in that movie. In Supremacy, Bourne doesn't bother even to change his clothes as he travels to Moscow. But the movie isn't much smarter when the final chase scene begins with Bourne's primary nemesis spotting him out his car window as he is driving. Yup. That's it. Eomer is just driving along when he looks out his car window, and he's like, "Bourne!" and he hops out of his car to shoot at the man. I mean, granted he knows Bourne is in Moscow, but come on! Bourne's many yards away from the street, he's not even facing Eomer when he spots him! Come on, lame shortcut coincidences are even worse than the "you killed my [blank], now I want revenge" cliche!

To be fair, the car chase through Moscow is pretty good. And it really stood out to me when it entered the tunnel. Most car chases are nicely choreographed ballets of near-misses and close-calls. But Bourne and Eomer didn't care who got in their way or who they hit. Cars were being crunched up against one another, mooshed into walls, spun around and plowed through. It was pretty cool. After all, Bourne was fighting for his life. And he was on a mission. He was in Moscow for a reason. In the end, of course, Eomer was killed in his effort to kill Bourne. So morally, he killed himself. Thus freeing Bourne from the moral dilemma of taking revenge on the man who killed his woman, or trying to rise above killing to become the man his woman would have wanted him to become. And what was Bourne's mission, for which undoubtedly dozens of innocent Muscovites were injured or killed? Why, to find the daughter of the people he killed, and apologize.

Perhaps this is what the Bourne franchise will become, a sort of 12-step program for recovering assassins. Every movie, Bourne will have flashback memories to another of his assignments, and he'll battle more secret agents to find the victims and apologize to them. That final scene should have been in Russian. I mean, come on. He's supposed to be the speaks-every-language-in-the-world-flawlessly superagent. He's talking Russian at the girl, and she tells him, "I speak English." Right. First of all, how did she know that he was American, or an English speaker? Even if she could tell he was a foreigner, how did she know he wasn't German, or Estonian? Second, she's a teenage Russian girl living in a housing project. It's one thing to speak a foreign language on a "hello, how are you, I have a red pencil box" level, but are we supposed to believe that she could understand "I'm a government assassin, and I killed your parents, so you shouldn't blame your mother for the murder-suicide, because that story was completely fabricated to cover my assassination" or some shit like that? That girl should have replied, "I'm sorry, I didn't understand that. Could we go back to Russian?" To top it off, Bourne walks off into the sunset. He just told the girl that he murdered her parents and she didn't call the cops. Right.

A lot of people like the Bourne Supremacy. On the surface, it appears to repeat many elements of the Bourne Identity, but with bigger stunts, more actions, more intense chase scenes. Whatever. For me, it was a disappointment, because it lacked the things that made the first movie interesting: Bourne's unique character and smarts. Bourne wasn't cool, he wasn't smart and neither was the plotting of this movie. I miss cool, smart Bourne.

© 2004 Jeffrey P. Hui