Now, since that's about as close to stock movie-pullquote criticism as I've ever written, I'll detour a bit and say this: Joan Allen is fucking luscious!!!! Finally, she's freed from the frumpy clothes and conservative hairstyles that have always made her seem much older than she is, so she's as sexy as she is commanding. I can only wring my hands in desperation that they didn't give her a gratuitous shower scene. Allen plays a CIA operative whose secret mission is botched, seemingly by the elusive Jason Bourne (Matt Damon). As she digs deeper, she finds some dirty past dealings involving Bourne's boss from the last movie (Chris Cooper) and Brian Cox, who tries to trump her leadership at every turn, and may be covering up secrets of his own. Cox is brilliant, a perfectly shady foil to Allen's committed-yet-conflicted woman who refuses to yield to the endless pissing contests she runs up against. Damon is totally credible as Bourne, this time working to clear his name and exorcize some personal demons. His story in this one has much more gravity – less purely fever-pitched and more purposeful, as he has come to understand his role in some very nasty business, and the impact it's had on people he cared for. What I loved about the movie is that it refused to take the standard action-movie route, almost to an obsessive degree. Nothing is done as you'd expect it to be done; the dialogue is organic and revealing; there are no pointless wisecracks; and even the car chases don't come off as simple filler. A fistfight scene goes on so long and so brutally that it comes off like a real fistfight: no Kill Bill-style laughs, no Lethal Weapon-style testosterone. Just two guys beating the shit out of each other … for their lives. And a climactic car-chase toward the end somehow seems introspective, despite being as balls-out awesome as the freeway chase in The Matrix Reloaded. Everything about the sequel has been ramped up in just the right way, and not just in terms of bigger explosions. What I respected most about Supremacy was its serious-mindedness, never resorting to having Bourne making funny remarks while kicking some bad guy's ass. It's all nebulous and tragic, and in one of the film's final scenes, as Bourne walks through a bleak and snowy Moscow housing project having just met with the daughter of two people he killed and told her that he was the killer, the pentinent tone has as much emotional weight as the famous Godfather 2 scene with Pacino sitting in his chair, staring into the distance as he hears the gunshot that, on his orders, kills his brother. This moment shook me awake and made me think that, 50 years from now, shit like Paycheck will play on Turner Classic Movies with all the one-dimensionality of those old Audie Murphy war movies … while The Bourne Supremacy will stand out immediately like a Godfather flick. Seriously, it's that good. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go make some Joan Allen fake nudes, or I am seriously going to die.
Review by |