The Bourne Supremacy (film)

My first film review ... for a 4-year-old film!

It's hard to put my finger on why, but I think this is the best action movie I have ever seen.

The plot is complex enough to be interesting without being absurdly intricate. It is politically relevant without being ham-handed or preachy. It's vaguely plausible, with only a few small holes.

One of the things that makes it work so well is the pace, not simply of the action, but of the story - time is not wasted explaining things that don't need to be explained, the viewer is expected to assimilate things in real time. And if you don't understand exactly what's going on - well, neither do the characters.

Possibly the lack of a sidekick helps in this - Jason Bourne has relatively little dialogue for a leading character, because he's on his own and has no-one to talk to.

The second thing is the quality of the acting, which makes every character believable. Joan Allen is every highly competent, highly strung American woman manager I've ever worked for (and I've worked for a few). Brian Cox is just as convincing. Julia Stiles makes such a distinct character out of a small part that I feel like I know her from somewhere, though I can't find anything else I've watched that she was in.

And it's easy to miss just what a superb job Matt Damon does to be so believable all the way through with so little dialogue and so much of the story going on in his own head. He isn't able to carry the story with monologues or blatant gestures, because Bourne isn't that sort of person, so for a lot of the film he's in tight close-up, taking us along with the smallest fickers of reaction in his eyes and mouth. Oksana Akinshina does just the same in her one scene at the end, though one might have thought being so beautiful that it hurts just to look at her ought to be talent enough.

The car chases are a weak point. They are a too implausible and go on too long. But I suppose there's some law or something that big-budget movies have to have long stupid car chases. The set-piece in the centre of Berlin is done brilliantly.

I went back to watch the first film (The Bourne Identity) again, to see if it was this good and I hadn't noticed. It isn't. It's just another average action movie.

Paul Greengrass directed this one and the third in the series (The Bourne Ultimatum) which I've ordered. I've heard some people say it's better than Supremacy, which would be impressive.

I also watched "Revenge of the Sith" recently. It seemed very significant that in the directors' commentaries, George Lucas went on and on about what a great job the animators and designers had done, while Greengrass went on and on about what a great job the actors had done. I suspect that goes some way to explaining the difference in the quality of the two films.