Monday Sequel Spotlight: The Bourne Supremacy

Welcome to a new weekly feature here at Movies With Abe. In this series, I’ll be taking a look at some famous (and infamous) sequels to see how they compare to the original. I'll do my best to alternate between the greats and the best forgotten. Leave your thoughts or a suggestion for a spotlight in the comments!

The Bourne Supremacy
Directed by Paul Greengrass
Released July 23, 2004



It’s appropriate to praise this film now since the fourth film in the series, with a new Jason Bourne, is being released this August. This is one franchise where the earlier developments are clearly the strongest yet the third inexplicably nets all the praise and awards love. This sequel turned up the heat after the already competent firs film by bringing in a new director, Paul Greengrass, and shaking things up right at the very beginning with an unexpected development. Adding Joan Allen and Karl Urban to the ensemble also amped it up considerably, but this film is much more about the action. The car sequences in this film are legendary, and John Powell’s score is terrific. It’s rare that such a strong action film also has a decent, coherent story, and this film managed to pull that off. This was actually one of the first films I saw at a press screening, back when I was interning eight years ago with film critic Bob Tremblay of the MetroWest Daily News in Boston. It was easily the best film I saw that summer, and a great example of how a sequel can be an improvement on a great original. The third film didn't impress me nearly as much, and that's mainly because it was a less effective carbon copy of the second.