The Bourne Supremacy (2004, DVD)

If the late spy thriller writer Robert Ludlum was half the man I think he was, I'd like to think that if he were alive today he would have had mixed feelings about royalty checks from the film version of his second book in his masterful Bourne trilogy.

The film The Bourne Supremacy -- sequel to last year's better-than-average The Bourne Identity -- is such a disappointment that I cannot believe the rave reviews it has received from high-profile critics who should know better.

Forget that the story line and locales in the film version of "Supremacy" bear not a scintilla of resemblance to any part of the excellent book. Such liberties are an abomination and should result in a charge of false advertising for those of us who thought we were going to see the film version of a book, even assuming we were prepared for the usual Hollywood liberties that a migration to film from print generally require. It IS a different medium, after all, and I appreciate that.

But not this far afield! This is not Bourne Again; it's Bourne Anew, and it should have been aborted before coming to term.

Forget that the cinematography looks like it was conjured up by an amphetamine-addicted reject from the oh-so-passe shaky-cam style made (in)famous on now-hackneyed TV fare like NYPD Blue.

And most significantly, forget that the only suspense in this alleged tale of intrigue is whether the audience can survive so mind-numbing an effort to exploit our senses in the absence of the intellectual stimulation that has put Ludlum's thriller books almost, if not quite, on a par with John Le Carre's spy novels.

Even forgetting those cardinal sins, what's left of this baby still sucks bricks like they were candies.


WHAT WORKS:
Easy. The casting works, end of story.

Joan Allen effectively looks the part of an ambitious and steely CIA assistant director who wants to show the good ol' boys that she can do it better than they can.

Brian Cox is central casting's ideal exhausted, jaded CIA operative who's a year from retirement.

And Matt Damon -- never one of my favorite actors -- is in that regard actually a very appropriate choice to play a one dimensional rogue agent, clueless about who he is and where he's going, and so emotionally ruined that he is incapable of even the slightest emotional range despite horrific personal trials.

As to the "bad guys," I don't know who the actors are and could care less. They look just like bad guys should -- bad.

Fine. That's it for the kudos.


WHAT DOESN'T:
Everything else.

First of all, it takes a lot of effort to take a wonderful book (about a betrayed CIA operative with amnesia whose wife is kidnapped by his own agency in order to blackmail him into flying to Hong Kong and become the killer he once was so he can rescue his wife -- who escapes on her own -- by helping the CIA end a bloody killing spree by a "look-alike" Jason Bourne intended to force the two Chinas into a devastating war) and make the story so utterly unrecognizable.

Gone is the book's colorful and mysterious Asia setting, with Germany and Russia in its place in the movie.

Gone early is the wife, not to mention a kidnapping.

Gone are the fascinating key players in the two Chinas, and the important, direct involvement of Bourne's former CIA handlers in the narrative, replaced in the film by Russian gangsters and artsy but unintelligibly-edited flashbacks of the handlers from the original Bourne movie.

Gone is Bourne's international tracking of an actual look-alike "other" Jason Bourne on an incredible killing spree.

Gone is the psychiatrist whose counsel and friendship are so crucial to Bourne and his wife in the book.

Gone in any intelligible form for anyone who didn't see the prequel, or read either or both books, is any comprehensible context for why Bourne/Damon is so screwed up.

What we are left with is a colorful, fast-paced miasma of shaky, grainy, quick-cut, sound-effect-filled elements held together by a crashing score and one predictable -- if implausible, but then what's new? -- car chase at the end.

Director Paul Greengrass (who directed the superb "Bloody Sunday") failed absymally to draw me into this one, and if Ludlum had any chutzpah he would put a contract out on screenwriter Tony Gilroy for crimes against the Ludlum estate.

If you're into video game atmospherics and abridged attention spans, I could see where you might like it.

Other than that, the big mystery to me about the alleged thriller The Bourne Supremacy is why anyone would rate it highly.

If you dont' believe me after seeing the movie, then read the book. Trust me; you won't recognize the story, and you'll enjoy it a hell of a lot more.