Following the Bourne Identity is, naturally, the Bourne Supermacy! Pretty much the same style of movie but instead of being chased, this time Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) is doing the chasing.
So Jason is kickin’ back on the other side of the world from where he last encountered the company Treadstone. As per the last movie, Jason still doesn’t remember much before he woke up at the beginning of the first movie. He has however escaped from Treadstone and is now living a peaceful life off the grid with the woman he met – Maree.
One problem – someone has killed two government agents and framed Jason for the kill, so they’ve sent more people out after him. While trying to escape his partner Maree is shot and killed, leaving Jason very, very disgruntled.
Now Jason is coming after them, only this time ‘them’ isn’t Treadstone. Treadstone has been shut down This time a CIA agent and her team have recruited some of the old Treadstone personnel to track down and kill JB, all the while he’s a step ahead and taking to fight back to them, until he can take down those responsible for killing Maree, and clear his name.
A Change of Direction?
In the last movie Jason was on the run and it was a case of one man running from a powerful entity. The change to that man attacking the bigger, more powerful enemy has Jason Bourne being more aggressive and vengeful since the death of Maree. This make the movie a bit more exciting in my opinion – never piss of a super smart awesome agent with martial arts skills!
Once again Jason Bourne is using his high level of intelligence to put the pieces together and displays brilliant strategy to slip through the cracks and make his moves without any hope of being caught. Small things like causing a gas leak in the house of someone he killed and popping a magazine in the toaster as a bit of a countdown before blowing the place I thought was really smart.
General pace of the movie
This movie is really shot and put together in a way that’s almost identical to the first. You’ve got the main, highly skilled assassin trying to take down Bourne (as in the first movie), and you’ve got the Government team tracking him trying to keep up.
This, movie the Bourne Identity Supremacy, is basically the same movie in terms of entertainment value – but it still rocks. Like the first movie, the intelligent approach, strategy and action are done in an interesting and exciting way that really works well.
The Action & Martial Arts
The moves a done reasonably well, but it’s hard to tell just how technical the fights are. Shaky camera movement and quick choppy shots disguise the fights and create the illusion of speed and skill – but that’s good cinematography when you don’t actually have that available to capture on camera.
There are some good flashes of trapping hands that were clearly visible though and cool to see, the magazine vs knife idea I found particularly interesting as I’ve seen it being taught in self defence classes – so seeing it in a movie is pretty cool.
The image that Bourne is given through this use of editing is that of a explosively fast fighter with highly technical skill – not my favorite way of showing it, but it works.
The car chases and everything else in the movie has this same touch of shaky and violent activity. Cars are crashing left right and center during the end chase and things are messy and out of control – just like real violence!
I like the ‘messiness’ of the movie, it’s like actual violence – never neat and tidy but messy and down right dirty. They demonstrated it tastefully in this movie.
Would I Recommend it?
Yes, it’s a smart and exciting action film. The Martial Arts is not that great but it’s not really a martial arts movie entirely, more of a standard action flick with a few cool fight scenes.
Find it On Blu-Ray –
Region A (US & Canada)
The Bourne Supremacy on Blu-ray
Region B (UK, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, etc)
The Bourne Supremacy on Blu-ray[Region Free]
On DVD –
Region 1 (US & Canada)
The Bourne Supremacy on DVD
Region 2 (UK, Europe, etc)
The Bourne Supremacy on DVD
Region 4 (Australia, New Zealand, etc)
The Bourne Supremacy on DVD
