“The Bourne Supremacy” (2004)
It’s easy to forget that the Bourne franchise was anything but a surefire success at its inception. Indeed, it was anything but a franchise initially, with the first film, “The Bourne Identity,” featuring a director and a star both unproven in the area of action, and being based off a seemingly defunct Robert Ludlum series that had been filmed before. And it was such a self-contained story that even Matt Damon, at the time, felt the character was unlikely to be resurrected. So while all kudos have to go to Doug Liman, Damon and screenwriter Tony Gilroy (the series’ godfather, in many ways) for rustling up the surprise smash of “The Bourne Identity,” to Greengrass (and Gilroy again, of course) have to go a lot of the laurels for making Bourne a viable continuing property. “The Bourne Supremacy,” to which he was attached after Liman dropped out (citing friction with Gilroy that would ironically also bedevil Greengrass) it was something of a leap of faith, as Greengrass had never handled anything of this size and scope. But he hit it out of the park, establishing not just a hugely lucrative franchise, but arguably consolidating and refining a camera-as-part-of-the-action style that had never really been employed on a tentpole before.
‘Supremacy’ in fact, may be held up as a kind of sequel gold standard in what it achieves: it expands the universe of the first film and establishes an aesthetic so recognisable that when “Casino Royale” breathed new life into the Bond franchise, it was widely regarded as having done so by liberally borrowing certain elements from its younger spy-movie brother. It’s not overstating it to say that in imbuing the action sequences with that in-the-moment feel, Greengrass found a whole new way to make Hollywood action movies. And this is all the more impressive because, in purely story terms, ‘Supremacy’ is pretty weak, with the kinetic, breathless filmmaking not just distracting us, but somehow making us not really care, that the plot makes very little sense. Bourne, living in peace in Goa with his girlfriend Marie, is dragged back into the spy life by wily old Ward Abbott (Brian Cox) who wants to both frame him for a crime that will cover up his own misdeeds, and to kill him (because that proved so successful the last time). Really the idea that Abbott couldn’t find any better patsy than the unkillable superspy who had bested him so often before is quite daft and we–oh wait! Brutal car chase! Gritty Berlin locales! Bourne using a rolled-up magazine as a weapon! The flash and dazzle of Greengrass’ breathless, sometimes disorienting but undeniably exciting shooting style covers a multitude of narrative sins, and strong performances across the board, especially from Damon as the taciturn Bourne who here doesn’t even have a girl-Friday foil to humanize him, make the whole into a kind of irresistible package. [B+]
“Bloody Sunday” (2002)
Greengrass’ fearlessness in tackling true-life topics of deep controversy is a defining characteristic of his back catalogue right from the start. And in that vein, just a couple of years after he’d outlined one of the UK’s most notorious race crimes in TV movie “The Murder of Stephen Lawrence” he took on “Bloody Sunday,” a taut dramatization of that most incendiary of historical events: the killing of 14 unarmed protestors in Derry (thanks to James for the correction) by British paramilitaries on “Bloody” Sunday, January 30th 1972. The massacre, which lies like a scar across the history of 20th-century British/Irish relations was widely believed instrumental in radicalizing the working-class Catholic segment of the population and driving enrolment in the IRA, and is therefore a landmark event in the early days of one of the most intractable and drawn-out political conflicts in modern memory. Greengrass’ film wisely keeps its focus narrow, though, and mediating events through the eyes of Ivan Cooper (James Nesbitt), the Protestant MP who organised the civil rights march that devolved into violence, the director even this early shows his flair for creating tension and drama from true-life events, while remain sensitive to their complexities.
With trademark shaky, handheld camerawork that lends everything that recognisable, documentary feel, he seems able to present a point of view that positively bristles with righteous anger without ever falling into the trap of whitewashing the victims, or wholly demonizing the perpetrators (except in one case, perhaps). And so we trace the parallel narratives of three groups: the march organizers; the British military authorities put in charge of the march’s containment; and the people caught in the literal crossfire, particularly one of the young men who was destined to be one of those killed (and also, as the film alleges, hamfistedly framed when nailbombs were planted in his pockets as he lay dying). Relatively unconventional at the time, it’s an early example of the filmmaking style for which Greengrass would become known, and while he would go on to glossier, grander Hollywood projects, the grit and nerviness of his approach here seems ideally suited to what must have been for him, as it was for all of us living in that part of the world at the time, a story that hit much closer to home. Winning the Golden Bear at the Berlinale (tied with “Spirited Away,” in fact) and the Audience Award at Sundance, it remains an outstandingly compelling evocation of just how quickly and catastrophically a tinder-box situation can become a conflagration. [A-]
