‘Bourne’ doesn't live up to expectations

Easily the least convincing aspect of “The Bourne Identity” was the romantic happy ending, with former CIA agent Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) and his lover Marie (Franka Potente) escaping the spy world by retreating to a Mediterranean beach.

It couldn’t last, of course, especially after the 2002 movie turned out to be popular enough to inspire a 2004 sequel. “The Bourne Supremacy,” in which Damon and Potente repeat their roles, quickly shatters their idyll and sends Jason back to his old job, outfoxing other agents and leading them on a merry chase around Europe.

Quick facts Starring: Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Brian Cox, Joan Allen, Julia Stiles Director: Paul Greengrass Running time: 1 hour, 48 minutes MPAA rating: PG-13

It’s an efficient if unnecessary sequel, far less interested than “The Bourne Identity” in the connection between the all-but-abducted Marie and the amnesiac but breathtakingly resourceful Jason. There’s nothing here to match their touchingly awkward love scene in the first film, or Jason’s frustrated attempts to figure out who he is and what kind of danger he’s in.

But there certainly are a lot of chase sequences in the new film. The original’s director, Doug Liman, who gave the first “Bourne” a playful touch of class, has been replaced by Paul Greengrass (“Bloody Sunday”), who brings little distinction to the picture. It’s no longer about people who are thrown together by circumstance and discover they like it. It’s about cars crashing and agents double-crossing each other.

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While Greengrass is an expert at using fast editing and nervous camera movements to create a sense of claustrophobia and foreboding, he’s less successful at suggesting that these people are more than video-game figures. The new “Bourne” is not much more plausible than the first one, but the faulty story logic calls attention to itself because the characters no longer matter.

What ultimately happens to Marie simply shouldn’t happen to a character who seemed so genuine last time around. She’s treated as extra baggage, a drag on Jason’s latest espionage adventures, and Greengrass directs Potente as if he can’t wait to lose her. Here’s hoping she was well-paid.

Perhaps the most notable aspect of the sequel is its negative portrait of a counterproductive, rather clueless CIA, which is dominated this time by an icy macho lady (Joan Allen) who thinks she understands more than she does. Returning from the first film are her homicidal superior (the suitably malevolent Brian Cox) and his assistants (Julia Stiles and Gabriel Mann, both wasted in tiny roles that almost anyone could have played).

The script by Tony Gilroy, who co-wrote the first film, drops terms like “slam dunk” and “oil privatization,” apparently to let us know he’s been reading the papers. And there’s quite a lot of footage devoted to the elusive Treadstone project, which was supposedly ended with Jason’s disappearance at the end of “The Bourne Identity.”

Chris Cooper, so memorable as a CIA official who was killed in the first film, turns up again in a cameo flashback. His too-brief appearance is another reminder of how empty of personality “The Bourne Supremacy” really is.

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