THE BOURNE SUPREMACY makes people puke! In a good way!!!

Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a couple more looks at THE BOURNE SUPREMACY from early screenings. Sounds like the film's more of a Spare instead of a Strike... A Field Goal instead of a Touchdown... Par instead of Birdie... BJ instead of a night of hot sex. You know, it gets the job done and is enjoyable, but a little less than perfect. Enough of my jibber-jabber... Let's get to the reviews. Enjoy!

Hiya guys!

Moonshine, checking in. I just got home from a screening of "The Bourne Supremacy" at the Writer's Guild in Beverly Hills, and wanted to give you a few impressions. I've seen the other reviews that recently appeared, and I'm leaning more towards the guy who liked it, with a little bit of the guy who didn't mixed in.

First up, I should say that the guy who introduced the movie said that it was the final print of the film that would be released in two weeks' time. So, I don't know what other endings there are floating around out there, but I supposedly got the one Joe Moviegoer will see when he plunks down his nine bucks or ten bucks.

Second, I'll echo the guy who liked the movie in admitting that I didn't really dig "The Bourne Identity." There was some good stuff in it, like the Mini Cooper chase scene, and I love Franka Potente. But everything just fell apart in the third act for me. I didn't like that there was no real resolution to Bourne's identity. The poor s.o.b. never really found out who he was, except that he was a heavily-programmed assassin.

So, yeah, anyway, "The Bourne Supremacy" kind of picks up that thread. It's two years later, and Bourne still doesn't know who he is. He lives in India, and he's having nightmares with lots of disjointed bits and pieces flashing around in his brain, but he can't figure out what any of them mean. Meanwhile, in Berlin, a Russian oil magnate sends his own assassin-for-hire (played by none other than Karl Urban, LOTR's Eomer) to take out two dudes who are working a shady deal that CIA agent Joan Allen has set up. In setting up the kills, Karl frames Bourne, making it look like he's come out of retirement. Thanks to the "evidence" Karl plants, Joan finds out about the supposedly defunct black ops program that Bourne was a part of and heads off to Washington to drag Brian Cox (the CIA bigwig in charge of the program) back into the plotline. While Joan digs around to figure out who Bourne is, Karl heads to India and through means I don't want to spoil too clearly ends up dragging Bourne right back into the murky world he'd wanted to leave behind.

What I liked about this one in comparison to the first was that it seemed more tightly plotted and moved along at a brisker pace. There are two outstanding car chases: one in India, and one in Moscow that is a little on the long side but has an ending that had the audience I saw it with cheering.

Julia Stiles returns, and as with the first film her time onscreen is too brief (I actually thought she served no point whatsoever in the first film), but in this one she has a really great solo scene with Matt Damon. Joan Allen doesn't get much to do except fume and stomp around a lot, which is a shame. But she has two scenes with Matt Damon in which they talk on the phone that are top notch. There were three scenes that provoked cheers or applause from my audience: the Moscow chase scene and these two phone calls. So they're really *that* good.

The ending was far better in this one. I thought way too much was left unresolved in the first one. This time around, things are wrapped up much more clearly.

I do have a few complaints.

Bourne has a hand-to-hand fight scene with another assassin from his former black ops project. The other assassin tells Bourne that they are the only two left, but unless everyone else on the hit squad was dispatched off camera in the two year interim between films, the filmmakers really screwed that one up. I remember at least one other bad-ass assassin who made it through unscathed in Identity, who I kept waiting to turn up again this time around. He never did, so maybe he's waiting for Part 3.

Although I'm sure they kept Bourne's nightmarish dreams to only a few scenes so as not to confuse the audience with too much unrelated information, it was just a little too convenient that the only nightmares of Bourne's that we repeatedly see relate directly to the plotline that will soon engulf him.

And then there's the action scenes. The hand-to-hand fight, the two car chases, a sequence where Bourne nabs Julia Stiles. They're all pretty great, but the shaky camerawork and the strobe-like editing was ridiculous. It's darn near impossible to figure out who's kicking who's ass, because of the shakiness and quick cuts. I was literally sitting in my seat during the Moscow chase scene, thinking, "I'll have to say something in my review warning epileptics to steer clear of this one" when SPLAT! a girl several rows behind me literally threw up. You ought to have seen the tizzy that one caused in the audience, but fortunately she was far enough back that I didn't get hit. The place stunk like puke from that point on, though, so I'm glad the movie was pretty close to ending. As soon as the credits started rolling, I was outta there.

Anyway, herky jerky camerawork and puking chicks aside, I really did like this one. It's a good summer action diversion. Nothing groundbreaking to speak of, and it's full of the same old action-movie cliches you've seen before, but it's still a fun way to spend a couple hours. I guess my only advice would be to try to sit in the back row, just so there won't be any potentially queasy folks behind you ready to ralph on you if the camerawork and editing put them off their lunch.

Sounds flawed, but entertaining... and vomit inducing, which always makes for an interesting theatrical experience! Now for review numero dos!!!