Day Twenty-One: The Bourne Supremacy

THE BOURNE SUPREMACY

Starring:
-Matt Damon as Jason Bourne
-Franka Potente as Marie
- Brian Cox as Ward Abbott
-Joan Allen as Pamela Landy
-Julia Stiles as Nicolette Parsons

Directed by: Paul Greengrass

Screenplay Credits: Tony Gilroy & Brian Helgeland

MPAA Rating: PG-13 – violence, intense action, and brief language


A couple of years have passed since Jason Bourne learned he was a CIA assassin, and he continues to regain his memory through occasionally violent flashbacks and dreams. Jason and Marie are living together in Goa, India. Marie is blonde now, so she doesn’t look as severe as she did in the first film.

In Virginia’s big CIA office, Director Pamela Landy is overseeing one of her agents paying $3 million for the Neski Files, documents about $20 million that was stolen from the CIA seven years earlier.

Cut to a basement in Berlin were the million-dollar Neski swap is going down. A Russian assassin named Kirill has planted two bombs, one on the mainline and one on the subline. He rigs the second bomb to malfunction. When the first bomb goes off, Kirill kills both men and swipes the Neski documents. He then delivers them to his boss, Russian oil tycoon Yuri Gretkov.

Back in India, Jason spots a suspicious looking man in town and, sure enough, the man is asking around for him. Jason grabs Marie and they start careening through town trying to get away. The bad guy stays right behind them, eventually managing to shoot and kill Marie. The car flies off the bridge and Jason struggles to get Marie’s body out. He tries to do underwater CPR, which is weird, and of course he is unsuccessful. She floats away all creepy looking and the bad guy thinks he’s killed Bourne and leaves.

I was never overly attached to Marie, so I’m not torn up that they decided to kill her. This makes Bourne a little more like Bond… he can’t hold on to the same woman for very long.

A fingerprint is found on the bomb that failed to detonate, and that print belongs to none other than Jason Bourne. There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark…

Jason burns all of Marie’s passports and pictures and things, then travels to Naples, Italy. Landy receives clearance to pilfer through the Treadstone files, and she discovers that Jason is suffering from amnesia, and that Conklin was killed for letting Treadstone get out of hand.

Pam thinks that Conklin and Jason were in cahoots together and are somehow connected to the Neski documents. Oh, Pam. You’ve got it all wrong.

Fun fact: Most people named Pam are trashy. I speak from personal experience.

Landy and Ward interrogate Nicky Parsons. They realize that she knows more about the whole business than they do, so they drag her off to Berlin with them. Gee, I hope she didn’t have dinner plans.

Jason thinks the Treadstone folks are still after him and goes to interrogate the last remaining member of the team at his house. They get into a big, bloody fight and Bourne strangles the guy to death. Jason rigs the place to explode and gets the heck out of dodge.

Jason manages to track Landy to the Berlin Westin Hotel. He follows her to the local CIA station and hides a safe distance away before telephoning her and agreeing to meet … but only with an agent he trusts. Landy agrees to this and Bourne chooses Nicky. Ward warns Landy not to let Nicky go, but she ignores him and sends her out anyway. Bourne snatches Nicky and evades the surrounding agents.

Bourne questions Nicky about what’s going on and learns that Abbott was Conklin’s boss. Since she’s wearing a bug, Landy hears their whole conversation. Landy makes the decision to release Bourne’s photo to the local police. Boy, this is all just one big misunderstanding.

Bourne starts looking up stuff about Neski online. Supposedly, Neski was murdered by his wife, who then committed suicide.

CIA boy Danny has returned to the site of the bombing. He’s figured out that the second bomb was unnecessary, and he thinks that Bourne didn’t have anything to do with the murders. Abbott surprises everybody by knifing the kid to death.

Meanwhile, Bourne has broken into the hotel room where the Neskis were murdered. Vivid flashbacks confirm it was he who killed them. Back at the front desk, the hotel clerk recognizes Bourne’s photograph on a wanted poster and telephones the police. They arrive quickly, but Bourne evades them. Obviously. Is there anyone he can’t evade? No.

Landy and two of her guys make it to the Neski hotel room and look around for a few minutes before receiving word that Danny’s body has been found. Landy instantly suspects Abbott and gets to his hotel to confront him.

Abbott calls Gretkov to tell him that Bourne is still alive. He says the plan can still be salvaged, but Bourne has to be taken out. He believes that Bourne can finger them as coconspirators in the $20 million theft. Gretkov tells Abbott to buzz off and hangs up.

“I’m afraid, Ward, the time has come for us to part company.” – Gretkov

Suddenly, Jason comes creeping out of the shadows. He refuses to kill Abbott out of respect for Marie. Jason leaves and Landy arrives. She enters the room to find Abbott holding a gun. Abbott tells Landy that Danny was collateral damage, and that he isn’t sorry. Then he shoots himself. Good. I never liked him, anyway.

Bourne’s a smart cookie and he taped his last exchange with Abbott and mailed it to Landy. Then he boards a train to Moscow to try and find Neski’s daughter. Russian police start after him, then Kirill joins the party and once again it seems like everybody on the planet wants to kill Jason Bourne. Can’t this guy catch a break?

Kirill shoots Bourne, so he ducks into a dollar store to swipe some stuff, hops into a random cab and doctors his wound as he drives away. There are maybe ten police cars and Kirill chasing him, and this might be one of the longest car chases I have ever seen. Anyway, here’s the reader’s digest version: Bourne forces Kirill’s car into a concrete median, then watches him wheeze his last few breaths before walking away.

Gretkov is arrested by the Russian police after Landy gives them the tape that Bourne sent her, implicating him in the robbery and the Neskis’ murder. Neski’s daughter returns to her apartment to find Bourne sitting there. He tells her that he was the man who killed her parents. He apologizes and leaves.

“When what you love gets taken from you, you want to know the truth.” – Jason

Cut to New York City, where Bourne calls Landy on her cell. Landy wanted to thank him for supplying the tape. She apologizes for everything before telling him his real name, David Webb, his birth date, 4-15-71, and his home state, Missouri.

“Get some rest, Pam. You look tired.” - Jason


Again we end with a perfect setup to a follow-up movie, which is- of course- exactly what the filmmakers wanted. This one just didn’t do it for me and I’m not sure why. I do love all the times when Bourne is watching people and they have no idea, then he clues them in and they look around all alarmed and confused. That’s just funny to me.

I could be mistaken, but it seems like this one jumped around a lot more than the first one did. It was a little harder to follow, and it took me longer to get into. I would like to have seen more of Nicky Parsons, mainly because she strikes me as an interesting character, and I don’t think she’s been explored fully enough.

I guess I liked it, but certainly not as well as I liked the first one. At this point I do feel kind of bad for Marie, but more than that I’m still torn up about the dog murder in the first film. What can I say? Women hold grudges.

FINAL GRADE: B

Off in search of David Webb,

M.