The Bourne Supremacy

Two little words: The Bourne Supremacy offers a rip-roaring lesson in true heroism

By Anthony Allison

Our noble leader really needs to see The Bourne Supremacy.

Because, without spoiling anything, it's safe to reveal that one of many, agreeable surprises in Paul Greengrass' action-packed sequel to The Bourne Identity, is that Matt Damon's super-spy proves what a hero he is by simply uttering two immensely powerful words. No, George, not "Mission accomplished." But, "I'm sorry."

Forget what Tina Turner warbled. When this supposedly invincible superpower has been humbled by a bunch of Fallujah thugs, we do need another hero. Desperately. Jason Bourne wouldn't have sat, bemused, in a Florida classroom knowing his country was under attack. And he sure wouldn't have let Osama bin Laden still be laughing at us nearly three years later. He'd have hunted the Saudi scum down in his South Waziristan cave and "neutralized" him with calm, ruthless efficiency.

More to the point, Bourne Identity co-screenwriter Tony Gilroy here shows that he understands what former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke knew too: It's not a sign of weakness to apologize for screwing up. It's a sign of maturity and strength. Nothing is more apt to restore people's battered faith in you.

So nothing is more welcome right now than the chance to bury our collective shame in some good, old-fashioned, escapist wish fulfillment. Move over, 007. The late Robert Ludlum's imperturbable, CIA-trained assassin is back for another rip-roaring but refreshingly dark, cynical, embittered and brutal ride.

The other thing President Bush should do is immediately hire Joan Allen as George Tenet's successor at that embattled, Langley, Va., Mickey Mouse outfit formerly known as an intelligence agency. She's magnificently charismatic as the ambitious CIA boss locking horns with grizzled spymaster Brian Cox. "You talk about this stuff like you read it in a book," he hisses, with venomous, postmodern irony, as they unravel a dastardly plot involving a corrupt Russian oil magnate (Karel Roden) and his sinister hired gun (Karl Urban). Meanwhile Cox's renegade former top-secret "Treadstone" operative, Bourne, is forced out of relatively blissful beachfront retirement (Bourne Identity's Franka Potente returns briefly, as do CIA agents Kirsten Dunst and Gabriel Mann) and back into action.

After Swingers director Doug Liman enlivened Bourne Identity with his edgy, indie-flick style, Greengrass, whose gritty, 2002 drama Bloody Sunday featured a harrowing re-enactment of a notorious 1972 massacre in Northern Ireland, had a hard act to follow. But like Liman, he benefited greatly from the counterintuitive casting of Damon, whose pretty-boy looks make him the most unlikely--and therefore chillingly convincing--cold-blooded killer since Edward Fox stalked Charles De Gaulle in Fred Zinnemann's The Day of the Jackal.

Greengrass does a creditable job, with a succession of truly suspenseful setpieces in Bond-worthy locations, from Goa, India, to the most evocative of Cold War spy drama settings, Berlin and Moscow. His megabudget, studio-flick inexperience only shows in some hyperactive editing that detracts from the stomach-churning impact of the crashes in the (inevitable) climactic car chase. (Stunt coordinator Dan Bradley also staged the shocking crash in Adaptation, with Bourne Identity's Chris Cooper, who makes a significant, but uncredited return appearance here.)

Something truly amazing is happening this summer. Tinseltown's money grubbers finally seem to have learned that a sequel is supposed to improve on the original, not just be a pale imitation. After Damon has an extraordinarily emotional meeting with a terrified Russian girl (agonizingly good Oksana Akinshina), then goes on to deliver the perfect, barbed curtain line, you're totally ready to forgive and forget some of his earlier, more outrageously unlikely antics. Like Shrek and Spidey before him, Jason Bourne is back, better than before--the ideal, conflicted, complex hero for our troubled, amoral times.