Matt Damon has gotten himself a nice little franchise with the Jason Bourne character. I was quite surprised with the original – THE BOURNE IDENTITY. The new film picks up where the first one left off. Jason Bourne (Damon) and his girlfriend Marie (Franka Potente, RUN, LOLA, RUN) have been running around the world trying to keep away from the CIA. Russian businessman Gretkov (Karel Roden, HELLBOY) sends an assassin named Kirill (Karl Urban, LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS) to set up Bourne and kill him, so Bourne must set out to find the truth.
Meanwhile, new CIA director Pamela Landy (Joan Allen, THE ICE STORM) is convinced that Bourne is behind the recent assassinations in Germany and enlists other CIA agents – Ward Abbott (Brian Cox, 25TH HOUR), Danny Zorn (ABANDON) and Nicky (Julia Stiles, SAVE THE LAST DANCE) – who have dealt with Bourne in the past to aid in her search. Bourne doesn’t hide from CIA agents, drawing them out to discover why they are after him.
It’s intriguing how the film weaves the various storylines together. The story is smart and entertaining. The only thing that director Peter Greengrass (BLOODY SUNDAY) doesn’t do equally well or better than Doug Liman (GO) did in the original is filming the fight scenes. Where Liman had confidence with his choreography and allowed us to closely watch the fighting skills of Bourne, Greengrass goes with a more modern handheld, super-quick cut approach that doesn’t give you time to appreciate what’s going on on the screen.
However, this doesn’t ruin the film, only weakens the one fight scene in an apartment. I probably wouldn’t have noticed it, if it were not for the fact that the original film’s fight scenes stuck out in my mind as something special. In the end, this is a delightful sequel to the solid first installment and with a bit of new information revealed at the end, I’m sure we’ll be seeing a third in this series.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
