Today, shamefully, I went on the search around my house to steal petty amounts of money from my siblings – I found £1.12. Result. However, during the search I found products that are priceless: Gameboy Advance with a wide array of games (Crash Team Racing, The Incredibles, Tomb Raider and Sonic), Fantastic Mr. Fox and half a dozen DVD’s.
Among the DVD’s was Bourne Supremacy – The ‘American’ Bond movie, despite having a British director. I will refrain from making comparisons throughout this post, maybe one, but you have to allow me that. Me, Mark Critchley and John Foley watched Bourne Supremacy when it was released a few years ago, I cannot remember what we said about the movie – knowing how we were in the past it probably would have been a few muttered words, either “gay” or “alright” and then ventured back into taking the piss out of one another.
So, I watched Bourne Supremacy with a clean slate, I remembered nothing from the first time I watched it apart from that Paddy Considine was in it. The film is fast paced all the way through it, but this does not mean there is a lack of dialogue or character building, quite the opposite. All the while there is dialogue there is tension building up; the perfect example is while the CIA is tracking Simon Ross (Considine) at his Guardian newspaper office. Something a lot of action movies fail to do (see, I didn’t mention Bond!) and tend to lose the interest of the audience for a while until more rockets are shot up the arse of the Middle East.
My favourite parts of the movie were the Waterloo station sequence of events, which showed that suspense and action can be built up without blowing the shit out of London and then cruising off in a Ferrari or hover-craft. David Strathairn who plays Noah Veson is despicable and doesn’t own a cat (Dr Evil – Austin Powers). Thirdly, America is the villain in this movie, unlike Rambo, Expandables and Steven Segal movies were the baddie is always an Arab, Eastern European or Russian. Finally, my overall favourite part of the movie was the filming of the hand-to-hand combat scenes whilst in Africa. Whilst watching this part of the film I thought “this must have taken weeks to put all together”, it is expertly done and the shaky hand held effect gets you much more involved than fly-on-the-wall camera views.
Overall, a very enjoyable movie that will probably be dismissed by a lot of people because of its nature, but I enjoyed it a lot and would recommend it. Much better than the recent (last 30 years!) Bond movies, with a better cast, more realism and more believable characters (no men with three nipples, flying circuses or Japanese butlers with killer hats), Matt Damon plays Matt Damon just right, that ain’t no bad thing.
4.5/5
