The Bourne Supremacy vs The Fugitive

When a summer action movie is a little weightier than the competition, I tend to give it a little more credit than it might deserve. In other words, for a couple days after seeing The Bourne Supremacy, I talked it up perhaps as bigger than it is. I'm better now. The Bourne Supremacy is the best…action movie of the summer, and the most…fun. In fact, I would say it's my all-time favorite Matt Damon movie…of the past couple years.

The Bourne Supremacy picks up right where The Bourne Identity left off. Maybe. I think it's probably a couple years on, but it could easily have been later that day, or maybe six years later, or a week and a half. How long does it take to dye your hair and hit the beach? An hour? Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) and his girlfriend Marie (Franka Potente) live on the beach in India. It's one of those movie villages, where the beach is beautiful and uncrowded, and it's safe enough to live in a hut that seems mostly windows, even though a block into the city it's a mess of gridlock and like monkeys in crates and barefoot kids and hey-wanna-buy-a-watch-or-a-chicken. Jason and Marie are happy, but he's constantly paranoid that it's time to move on. He feels they're being watched. They are, and soon, they're being chased and shot. Marie is killed by a bullet meant for Jason, and it's time to be Bourne again. Yes, I said it.

Meanwhile, Jason has been framed for murders he couldn't possibly have committed, with basically a piece of Scotch tape being the primary witness against him. Jason has memories of his first case, which did include murders, and wonders if this new case involves that, and so do we, and so does…

The CIA, here represented by Joan Allen and Brian Cox, who should pop up a quarter of the way into every movie like this and just be set loose to do as they please. They're fantastic. Joan Allen ignores the fact that she has the Glenn Close role and turns it into one of those determined character parts she's so good at. There's not terribly much for her to do, in theory, but she comes across as Damon's primary costar, just by shear force of talent and presence and her long blond CIA hair. Allen takes a stock character, who could just be barking orders and slamming phones and staring at tacks on a map, and turns it into an impressive character piece. Brian Cox is good too, but if you don't think he's the bad guy from the start, you really should set an afternoon aside and rent a movie or two. I promise, he's in both of them, and he's the bad guy.

And so, Bourne goes after the bad guys, to find out why they're after him, and the CIA goes after Bourne, to find out why he committed the crimes that of course were the bad guys all along. Director Paul Greengrass stages all scenes, be they action or conversation, with the same steady mix of tension and patience. Along the way, we get fights of uncommon immediacy and drama (Bourne kicks this guy's ass with a rolled-up magazine, in a hand-held scene with very few cuts. Later, he puts a gun to Julia Stiles's head and I swore he was going to use it.). And, near the end, there's a car chase through a tunnel that, at the time, I declared “the only good car chase ever,” which should tell you a little about my powers of overstatement. The other night on Letterman, Tom Cruise talked about the trouble of finding a director for Mission: Impossible 3. Maybe Paul Greengrass is the guy he should be talking to.

Matt Damon is surprisingly well-suited to play Jason Bourne. He's not a traditional action hero, so he relies on creating a believable character. He does some ridiculously heroic and macho things in this movie, but because he seems like a human being, we believe them as desperate acts, rather than showboating. There's a scene where Bourne faces off against some cops, and all he has is his brain and a bottle of water. When spitting a mouthful of water results in a kick-ass action scene, a breathtaking escape, is funny and nerve-racking, you're on the right track. In hands other than Damon's, I'm afraid it would have been obnoxious (it's hard even to imagine Ben Affleck pulling it off, let alone Vin Diesel or the Rock). The Bourne Supremacy wants to surprise us, and to be Big Summer Fun, but it wants us to remember the characters after the action has faded. What a surprise. Wouldn't it be nice if that happened more than, oh, once a decade?

The Fugitive is perhaps the Greatest Summer Movie Ever Made, meaning it is insanely fun. Like The Bourne Supremacy, it centers on a wrongly accused Movie Star, cat-and-dogging it with his supporting category counterpart. Great acting all around, surprises, amazing stunts—even a Best Picture nomination. I watched The Fugitive again about a month ago, for the first time in years, and I'm here to tell you, it's the Best…the Most..and the Greatest…fun you can have watching a big summer action movie. Especially at my place about a month ago. Is it more than that? Well, almost. Does it need to be? God no.

I shouldn't have to recap the plot, but here goes. Harrison Ford, with a beard, is doctor Richard Kimble. His wife is Sela Ward (the best Harrison Ford wife ever, and that's not overstatement.) She gets killed. He didn't do it, but he's arrested anyway. He escapes after a train hits his prison transport. He decides to run all over trying to find the real killer, before U.S. Marshal Tommy Lee Jones finds him first.

What results is an action movie with astounding stunts (Ford's run from the crashing train is still beautifully rendered, and I think we can all agree, would be ruined by overdoing the CGI if this movie were made today.) Director Andrew Davis does an excellent job of cranking up the excitement, so much that you probably have heightened memories of the film. Scenes that you might remember as exciting and action-packed, are actually way more cerebral than that, and involve Kimble…thinking. My favorites involve Kimble shaving, changing clothes, and eating a hospital patient's breakfast, and then just barely sneaking back out in time, as well as a trip through a crowded E.R with a cameo from Julianne Moore. Harrison Ford is perfect as Dr. Kimble. Like Matt Damon after him, Harrison Ford is perhaps not the most movie-star heroic for The Fugitive, and we all benefit greatly. This isn't a man who can do anything, but he's a man who will do anything he has to. Ford's interrogation scene early in the movie remains his finest piece of acting.

Tommy Lee Jones is good too, but a decade later, I had trouble finding much revelatory about his performance. It's your basic Tommy Lee Jones. Don't get me wrong, he's good, and I like the camaraderie between him and his marshals. Ten years later, it's hard to see how people came to view Jones as someone stealing the movie, when clearly it belongs to Ford (and I would put the haunting images of Sela Ward a close second). Then, the movie comes to an end, and as Jones and Ford are riding in the cab, and Jones unlocks Ford's handcuffs, it dawned on me: this role was invented by Tommy Lee Jones. It's become such a cliché, but this guy was first and was duly rewarded.

The plot is completely beside the point. We just want to see Ford proven innocent, the one armed-man brought to justice, and the janitor from Scrubs shooting it out on the subway. Oh, and the jump into the river. And the chase through Chicago on St. Patrick's day.

So, it's Summer. Go see The Bourne Supremacy. Then rent The Fugitive. Keep them both around, in case of emergency. Summer won't last forever, you know.

The Bourne Supremacy: A
The Fugitive: A