Matt Damon returns in action-man guise as Jason Bourne in The Bourne Supremacy, a modern spy thriller that most critics agreed was "brisk, engrossing and intelligent". Audiences also lapped up this sequel to the 2002 hit The Bourne Identity, in which Damon's rogue agent is hotly pursued across Europe by the CIA and forced to crash cars, shoot people and blow things up.
Re-Bourne
Rather than a single 'making of' featurette, this DVD hosts a batch of smaller featurettes each running at about 4-5 minutes long. Matching Identities is the weakest of these, merely serving as an opportunity for director Paul Greengrass to shamelessly gush over his cast and for members of his cast to gush over each other. Much more interesting is Keeping It Real in which he outlines the dramatic intention behind his documentary style and his one-take approach to shooting the action - a working experience he describes as "dancing on the edge of a cliff".
Other featurettes echo this commitment to realism including jaw-dropping behind-the-scenes footage of a gas-filled house being ignited in Blowing Things Up (no CGI, folks!) and Crash Cam where Damon happily reports, "I blew out the clutch on a brand new Mercedes!" (regarding that dramatic chase scene through Moscow). In Bourne To Be Wild he brushes up the Filipino Kalis moves he learned in the first film and in Anatomy Of A Scene he dangles from a skinny cable over a murky river - a featurette that also wins points for unintentional slapstick. "You gotta look cool, know what I mean?" cracks Damon, before a comically rubbish attempt to leap over a railing...
Declassified
Five deleted scenes are mostly quick cutaways except for two involving Brian Cox. The first sees him in hushed conference with a dodgy Russian agent while the other has him face-off with a hard-nosed Joan Allen. Greengrass does not offer any commentary for these, although he does step up for the main feature. He talks in more depth about his commitment to an "observational" style with the use of handheld cameras but he also delves into the psychology of Bourne - "a man in conflict with himself". Like the movie, this DVD cuts to the chase with a largely fun, informative and fast-paced selection of extras.
EXTRA FEATURES
