The Bourne Supremecy

Fuhrio

Saw it last night, an excellent movie, as good as the first, not better, equal to.

Mat Damon was excellent and it was a good storyline.

What did you think of it?

dub_dan

I thought it was fantastic!

teck-x5

Perfect. Except for the shaky cam, it annoyed the crap out of me

ixoy

Really enjoyed it. Another top-notch sequel. The pacing was superb, with Matt Damon constantly zipping about the place (along with the cameraman), ensuring the movie never even came close to dragging. The frantic camerawork and thumping beats helped crank up the tension beautifully and I love the way the characters were far more enigmatic and, ultimately engaging, than another spy franchise with another J.B. in the lead. Definetely recommended as, to my mind, one of the best Hollywood mainstream movies of the year so far.

Raoul Duke

teck-x5 wrote:

Perfect. Except for the shaky cam, it annoyed the crap out of me

100% agree with you there. I felt my temper actually rising as the film went on. It's been along time since a film's done that. It annoyed me so much because the rest of it was so good. How can anyone have thought that the fight with the other assassin was well filmed? You couldn't really see what was happening. The camera was so close to the actors that they were in danger of banging into it. All the training that Matt Damon and co. had was wasted.

yeah saw it in the states last month.
Excelent film!
Totally agree with the last two posts

Tusky

Earthman wrote:

yeah saw it in the states last month.
Excelent film!
Totally agree with the last two posts

but the last two posts dont agree with each other !!! lol

Rofl
prize to tusky for noticing that
Blame tiredness
an excelent film tho-reccommended

unclear as it looked it was actually ixoy I was agreeing with

Phil_321

Yeah, great film, shaky cam was a dissappointent at times though.

da_deadman

I too thought it was very good, I would agree that it was one of the better Hollywood films of the year. The only problem was, of course, the camera work at times. That fight with the other assassin in Munich was really hard to watch and to see what was happening, and the car chase was good but again the camera work let it down from time to time.

Overall, a film worth watching.

anthonymcg

Raoul Duke wrote:

How can anyone have thought that the fight with the other assassin was well filmed? You couldn't really see what was happening.

I liked it. I thought it was a fresh perspective and emphasised the claustrophobic nature of a fight particularly one as brutal as that. Plus its trying something new.

ixoy

anthonymcg wrote:

I liked it. I thought it was a fresh perspective and emphasised the claustrophobic nature of a fight particularly one as brutal as that. Plus its trying something new.

Yeah which is why I'm being more lenient although I think the fight scene was a bit too shakey cam. For a great 1-on-1 fight check the Alias Season 2 finale (far superior to Kill Bill's efforts). However, the shakey cam worked great in adding the tension and energy of the car chase.

Fuhrio

I think the shaky cam was ok except for in the hand to hand fight scenes, all you could see were two ppl rustling around, in the first movie, you could see damon doing amazingly quick moves with the camera at a distance.

Raoul Duke

ixoy wrote:

Yeah which is why I'm being more lenient although I think the fight scene was a bit too shakey cam. For a great 1-on-1 fight check the Alias Season 2 finale (far superior to Kill Bill's efforts). However, the shakey cam worked great in adding the tension and energy of the car chase.

If you want an example of the way I think fight scenes should be shot check out Oldboy. There's a scene in that which is just one take, the camera is at a nice distance so you can see everything and the hero has to fight about 20 guys with a hammer! All in 1 take. When you see it done like that you re-evaluate other fight scenes. Take away most fights fast music and flashy camera work and you're not left with much. Don't watch Alias so I can't comment on that one.

I get what the director of Bourne Supremacy was trying to do. He was trying to make us feel like we were in the middle of the fight. A noble effort but doesn't work for me.

Scruff

i thought it was a great flick. Normally hate the shaky cam method (one of the reasons i never got into NYPD Blue) but thought it was ok and worked with the general atmosphere. I think it worked well with the fight scenes, especially with the

other last surviving agent from threadstone in Munich

cause it showed what fights really are: nothing beautiful where every move falls into place but a mindless scramble for survival. Me thinks it also helped alot with the film getting a pg13 rating which wasnt so good.

xern

Seen it yesterday, thought it was great, as good s the first, and yes the shaky cam is really annoying. the other thing that was a bit odd was how the car he was driving in the chase stood up really well to all the crashes!!!!

but a great film all the same.

The Clown Man

Saw it the other day.

I was a little dissapointed, actually, more surprised, to see that the film had absolutely nothing to do with the book whatsoever. Like, why call it The Bourne Supremecy and use the characters if that is the only link you are going to have with the book?

Like, in the book the wife is kidnapped, not shot, the old project was the Medusa Project not Treadstone and got to do with a mission in the Vietcong, and the whole thing is set in China ffs! Totally different.

I'm a big fan of Robert Ludlum and I was really looking forward to seeing the film portraying the Bourne Supremecy cause it's a great novel, but it had not one similarity to the book the whole way through!

Of course, the novel was far more exciting but then I am going to say that amn't I!

Paladin

The Clown Man wrote:

I'm a big fan of Robert Ludlum and I was really looking forward to seeing the film portraying the Bourne Supremecy cause it's a great novel, but it had not one similarity to the book the whole way through!

You cant really fault movie makers too much if they use their artistic license to make a very good movie. If the movie was crap then you might say they should have stuck with the book, but it was based on the character more than anything else I guess.

Roll on the next Bourne movie.

midget lord

Agreed.

slave1

great film, the shaky cam was terrible, 2 quick hours, highly recommend
great casting in Matt Damon as Bourne, pace was excellent, although I doubt an ordinary little taxi cab would take the beating

Raoul Duke

Another problem I had with the film was the fact that it wanted us to take Bourne more seriously as an agent than, let's say, James Bond. Yet did the man ever think of putting on a hat or a wig? Any sort of disguise what so ever? It lessens him as the intelligent agent which everything else that happens tries to portray him as.

Fuhrio

He didnt put on a hat or a wig because he wasnt trying to hide from anyone, he was out to get people, so there was no real need.

Raoul Duke

Fuhrio wrote:

He didnt put on a hat or a wig because he wasnt trying to hide from anyone, he was out to get people, so there was no real need.

What about when he was on the train? He knew there would be lots of people looking for him yet there he was looking exactly like Matt Damon, plain as day for anyone who looked in his direction.

davros

Paladin wrote:

You cant really fault movie makers too much if they use their artistic license to make a very good movie. If the movie was crap then you might say they should have stuck with the book, but it was based on the character more than anything else I guess.

I just saw the film and enjoyed it. But I have to agree with The Clown Man - I can't see why they bothered to pay the Ludlum Estate for the rights when they didn't use any of the book.

Even the character of Bourne/Webb is completely different. In the book he was a Professor of Asian Studies who vented his rage on the enemy during the Vietnam war after they murdered his family. Later he posed as the fictional assasin, Jason Bourne, in order to smoke out a real assasin. In the film, he was just a brutish killer doing the CIA's dirty work.

Sleepy

Because to do the whole secret agent with amnesia of the first movie they had to pay for the title. The character is markedly different in the movies, he's saner, Marie has less of a role and they cut out Medusa and Bourne's history as Delta entirey. All that said, they did a fantastic job on the plot for the sequel. Brilliantly put together, well casted, good script so why did they have to go and ruin it with "gritty" (read appallingly bad) camera-work? The "shaky cam" as we've tagged it here is ultimately literally nauseating and never fails to remind me of how bad a movie the Blair Witch Project was. I literally had to close my eyes at times during this movie because I couldn't stomach any more motion sickness.

Overall, a great movie ruined by an inept and incompetent director with a penchant for "flair".

Batbat

slave1 wrote:

great film, the shaky cam was terrible, 2 quick hours, highly recommend
great casting in Matt Damon as Bourne, pace was excellent, although I doubt an ordinary little taxi cab would take the beating

yeah someone else noticed the bloody shaky cam, what was that about, it almost ruined the movie for me, still very good

Naos

Brilliant film. Thought the fight scene was good, agree with the claustrophobic post above. Would love to see a prequel of all their training, how they got taht good. Thats my favourite bit in films, the training scenes.

regeneration

I liked the "shakey cam"; it gave it a gritty edge that we were seeing people actually getting hurt/beaten up rather than stylised action movies that have more rigid camerwork, so the impact of the fighting can seem more ... "fun"?

damntheman

I really want to see this movie, but everyone I know has either aready seen it or doesn't want to see it.

regeneration

Go on your own? matineé?

Little Goose

Good film. As many others have said, the shaky camera is very annoying! I don't think it was as good as The Bourne Identity, but then again sequals are not usually as good as the first film...

damntheman

regeneration wrote:

Go on your own? matineé?

I've never gone to a movie by myself before

ObeyGiant

The BORING Supremacy more like.

I never saw the Bourne Identity (the BOR.. okay, I'll stop that), and was a little reluctant to see a sequel without having already seen the first movie. But my UGC Unlimited card had taken me to see everything else I'd wanted to see, so I went along hoping the director would cater for people like me, that know the gist of the back-story, but have no real idea of the stuff that happens in the first film.

I guess he did. Sorta. He made a film that spent two hours that quickly brought you up to speed. But never really went anywhere beyond that, and just produced cliche after cliche. Somewhere towards the middle, I began to wonder if Matt Damon was being paid per wooden "intense" face he could make, or if he just subscribed to Joey's smell-the-fart method of acting.

What I did like:
* the little bleepy noises for when they changed location and the words popped up on screen telling you where they were. I love that stuff so much.
* the girl from Lilya-4-Ever in something that didn't BREAK MY HEART.

What I didn't like:
* it felt like it had two endings. When the Brian Cox thing wrapped up, I thought "Well, at least that's over.. oh wait, there's more"
* speaking of which, the really contrived 'coincidence' at the end.. going to Russia to make amends: oops, that's EXACTLY where the assassin is
* most of the acting, especially Julia Stiles who put in the worst performance of her career

Now, maybe all this had something to do with the fact that I hadn't seen the first one. Maybe I was overly critical because I didn't have any sort of emotional attachment to the characters already, and maybe it's because I went in with a sort of "well, what's the big deal here?" attitude.

But that's a lot of maybes.

Sleepy

regeneration wrote:

I liked the "shakey cam"; it gave it a gritty edge that we were seeing people actually getting hurt/beaten up rather than stylised action movies that have more rigid camerwork, so the impact of the fighting can seem more ... "fun"?

Crap. The shaky cam is just this season's "bullet time". It's just a fad, over-used and tbh I genuinely feel nauseated when I watch it. I literally had to close my eyes during some of the scenes it was used in because I felt sick.

Good choreography can ensure that you realise that these people are getting hurt (and it was done perfectly in the first movie, notably when he hospitalises the two police officers).

It was done in an attempt to be "hip" and "edgy", nothing more than a pretentious, incompetent director tbh.

ObeyGiant - I think you're right, it was a sequel and as such, having not seen the first you'd no attachment to the characters. The first movie developed the whole relationship between Bourne and both Marie (his girlfriend), and his former handlers. Without the backgound of the first film, the second really wouldn't make too much sense.

regeneration

I thought bullet time was this season's bullet time 8)
Greengrass wanted to bring in some rawness to the action in Bourne, I think it worked. A fist fight in the middle of a house is pretty chaotic to start with; there's no reason it should be presented as anything else other than a melee of violence of fury, where it's hard to be sure what's going on
If it was a war movie and the shakey cam was in the middle of the trenches or something, you'd be be praising the movie for showing war in an unsetting and frantic light.

Batbat

regeneration wrote:

I thought bullet time was this season's bullet time 8)
Greengrass wanted to bring in some rawness to the action in Bourne, I think it worked. A fist fight in the middle of a house is pretty chaotic to start with; there's no reason it should be presented as anything else other than a melee of violence of fury, where it's hard to be sure what's going on
If it was a war movie and the shakey cam was in the middle of the trenches or something, you'd be be praising the movie for showing war in an unsetting and frantic light.

there was no reason to show the whole movie in shaky cam, please god they dont use this lame director again

Sleepy

Not if it was used to the nauseating effect the Bourne Supremacy used it to, no. Saving Private Ryan used it quite well: sparingly. It was over-used, confusing and from most people I've talked to about it, it'd give you motion sickness.

Miguel_Sanchez

Overall, a great movie ruined by an inept and incompetent director with a penchant for "flair".

Okay - now I've heard a lot of people complaining about the camerawork in this film. That's fair enough (personally I liked it). But I don't think it leads on that Paul Greengrass is an inept and incompetent director.

I think the man has a lot of talent as evidenced by this movie and 'Bloody Sunday'.

Sleepy

If he can't film a movie properly, then I think it's safe to call him incompetent.

RicardoSmith

I hated the camera work too. I would have enjoyed the movie a lot more without it. It added nothing to the film and I reckon, detracted from every action scene. The hand to hand, the car chases etc. In fact it made them hard to watch. I almost had a headache from shaky shaky. Personally the I think the first one is better. The 2nd would have been only for the camera style.

Gizzard

Jeff_Lebowski wrote:

Okay - now I've heard a lot of people complaining about the camerawork in this film. That's fair enough (personally I liked it). But I don't think it leads on that Paul Greengrass is an inept and incompetent director.

I think the man has a lot of talent as evidenced by this movie and 'Bloody Sunday'.

Yeah it does mean he is inept in the case of this particular film

Batbat

RicardoSmith wrote:

I hated the camera work too. I would have enjoyed the movie a lot more without it. It added nothing to the film and I reckon, detracted from every action scene. The hand to hand, the car chases etc. In fact it made them hard to watch. I almost had a headache from shaky shaky. Personally the I think the first one is better. The 2nd would have been only for the camera style.

I totally agree, would have been better then the first except for the terrible shaky cam, made my girlfriend feel sick halfway through

The director does not know how to shhot movies

Raoul Duke

regeneration wrote:

I thought bullet time was this season's bullet time 8)
Greengrass wanted to bring in some rawness to the action in Bourne, I think it worked. A fist fight in the middle of a house is pretty chaotic to start with; there's no reason it should be presented as anything else other than a melee of violence of fury, where it's hard to be sure what's going on
If it was a war movie and the shakey cam was in the middle of the trenches or something, you'd be be praising the movie for showing war in an unsetting and frantic light.

The thing with that fight was that the 2 men knew exactly what was going on. It was only us that was left in the dark. The other man had the same style as Bourne i.e. very controlled with every movement made with purpose and intent. In the first film and some of the other fights in this film you could sit back and enjoy it. But for this big fight where Bourne met his match suddenly you couldn't tell what was happening. In war nobody knows what is happening.

goo

whoever wrote:

The director does not know how to shhot movies

Don't think for a minute that he couldn't have shot regular, steady action scenes if he wanted to. Now, don't get me wrong, I agree that a sequel to a successful film was not the place to start messing around with the basic formula for how to shoot a film, but I admire him for doing it. Clearly what he was trying was to do was humanise the action and characters. If you watch the Matrix, it makes it seem like everyone should be able to do ridiculous things, jump off buildings and fight like God. In "The Bourne Supremacy" it really gets across the idea that even the most talented fighters are simply humans who are better at fighting.

At first I didn't love the shaky camera myself, but from a film fan's position I was grateful for the it AGAIN because I, for one, have seen enough:

"Mr. X punches Mr. Y"
"Mr.Y flips on to feet"
"Mr. X dodges punch. Mr.X dodges punch"
"Mr. Y hits Mr. X with bottle, leaps from window"

to do me for the rest of my life. I appreciate the urge by action filmmakers to out-do each other, and even like it sometimes, especially when they stick to a basic formula and try to film it better than the other guy. However, when someone goes against the grain, I don't think it's cool to whinge about it. We should be happy.

(clearly I liked the film)

RicardoSmith

The point is to tell a story. If you can't see whats going on, wheres the story telling? In real life things move quickly and you only have one view point, but unless you are inside the car, or involved in the fight, your head and thus your viewpoint does not move as if someone is kicking you head in.

Its simply not realistic, its stylised and abstracted. No less so than the chorographed scenes that you are complaining about. Another alternative is not to show it. Have you seen Takeshi Kitano's "Brother". He cuts away from a fight scene. Equally valid style of directing.

goo

Sorry if it came across as me saying that I liked it, I didn't, but I think it's horrible to pan him (and as a result, the film) because he tried something out that didn't work particularly well. Nope, I haven't seen "Brother".

Miguel_Sanchez

Batbat wrote:

The director does not know how to shhot movies

That is bull**** tbh. He knows full well how to shoot movies. Just because you didn't enjoy the style he employed does not mean he cannot shoot a film.

Personally I didn't find it hard to follow what was going on at all - granted there were a few seconds where you were wondering who was hitting who but they were quickly cleared up.

RicardoSmith

He tried something, it just didn't work.

Fuhrio

I heard they shot those shaky fight scenes non- shaky as well, and they might be taking out the shakyness for the dvd, not a completely reliable source though.