The Bourne Normalcy

Just when you thought you’d gotten enough of covert operations films and spy movies, Paul Greengrass brings you the follow up to 2002’s secret agent flick The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy. Yeah, it was a big movie this weekend. I even heard that it raked in somewhere around 50 million dollars. I happened to see it over the weekend and I have to say however that the film, although a step up from other spy films, tended to suffer from numerous problems.
As I see it, this film’s key to success, aside from its status as a sequel to a highly popular film, lies in three specific areas. They are the film’s lead actor, Matt Damon, the film’s allegedly “smart” storyline (that’s minus the fluff of a Bond flick), and the film’s rugged, washed out cinematography. These three points, which could have served to make this a uniquely engaging film, instead served to crop up as its greatest mistakes.
Starting with Matt Damon, we come to the indispensable fact that he’s really nothing more then an emotionless robot. Many could argue that a covert operations specialist would be void of emotion, trained to be bland and tasteless. Others could just as easily argue that this is a movie. And if the character isn’t engaging or elicit empathy in some way with the audience, then there must be problems with the character and/or the actor. In this case I thought it was Damon who made the slip-up. No matter what happens in the film, his character Jason Bourne, accepts it with the quiet gravity and personality of a wooden marionette. When he does display some sense of emotion he falls pray to the cookie-cutter emotional responses common in 9 out of 10 actors.
Regarding the film’s plot however, I tend to be a bit more forgiving. True, it was a mess of espionage and double-crosses, but I think we’ve come to expect that from our spy films. Spy films offer a unique opportunity; when a plot hole exists in the story, simply cover it over with “missing files” or “information that’s encrypted”. The Bourne Supremacy, like any other spy film, builds for itself a history that’s muddled in secret missions and devious government programs. While its choking thickness is something I’d normally slander a film for, I feel I can let this issue off with a warning. The Bourne Supremacy you see is merely a cinematic manifestation of everything we’ve come to love in modern serial television. Shows like 24, Alias and a host of others coast by week after week on contorted plotlines like this. If the people love it why change it?
But the biggest and most unforgivable mistake of the film lies in the cinematography and camerawork. This is without a doubt some of the worst camerawork to be committed to film this year, and the most railing thing about it is that you just know it was done on purpose.
Most, if not all of the film seems to be shot on a very shaky handheld. Why? Probably because the director of photography and the director felt that it would give the movie a cool, edgy and independent look. It doesn’t, it just looks unprofessional. Shots fail to frame up; views seem to wander on and off the characters, and to worsen the matter the editing is sharp and fast. And the film’s strengths suffer because of it. There’s a car chase sequence in this film that’s just fantastic. It’s truly a contender for being as well done as the respective sequences in Ronin or the French Connection. But it’s all lost due to the shaky hand-held camera. There’s a reason why the steady cam was invented. And believe me, no matter how much of an aesthetic appeal some filmmakers think a handheld has, there are entire legions of independents that wish they had the budget to use a steady cam.

All in all? Fine, but just like the samurai genre, I’ve yet to see a good spy film that’s definitive of this generation. The Bourne Supremacy had what it took to become a noteworthy film, but it wasted its strengths because of a few misplaced weaknesses.