Starring: Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Joan Allen, Brian Cox
Directed by: Paul Greengrass
Rating: 2 1/2

Ooof kya energy hai ! Call it a passionate pilgrimage, or the unholy trail from apocalypse to damnation? The manic energy of a life and a story on the skids comes tumbling out in a ripping roaring surge as a fugitive makes a run for an identity. This in a nutshell, is what The Bourne Supremacy , a sleek and stunning sequel to the The Bourne Identity, is all about. Though the direction has changed hands from Doug Liman who directed The Bourne Identity , to Paul Greengrass. As in Bloody Sunday Greengrass suffuses the Bourne sequel with a beguiling celerity. The narrative, a tangle of often-inaccessible visuals and emotions, are cut and pasted into a pastiche of louring suspense.

Every shot is tailored to get the adrenaline running. There’re no stopovers for emotional stocktaking at least, not for too long as our hero Jason Bourne(Matt Damon) runs from city to city in search of an identity he lost to powers that often control our lives without our knowledge.

Such is the velocity of Jason Bourne’s journey that we don’t really get to know if Matt Damon has played the character effectively. The camera (brilliantly manned to manic effect by Oliver Wood) pounds the pulse of the plot, as narration throbs across continents in search of a damnation.

The subliminal text in the espionage web, that life is often controlled by forces who pretend to guard human interest, is brilliantly tagged on to the thriller. While we thrill to Damon’s demoniacal but bridled action scenes(so interestingly cut, you forget you’re being manipulated into endorsing mesmeric malevolence) we also watch a whole ethos of enigmatic espionage unfold.

Unlike James Bond or even Mission Impossible, this Bourne thriller doesn’t glorify the spy genre. Rather than place him physically in a blow-by-blow account of an exterminator’s excursion(Schwarzenegger can relax) the director takes his hounded hero through a visceral vista of conjectural violence .

There’s a sense of impending doom in the narrative. The quality of damnation gives the narration a feeling of edgy enchantment.

The film opens in Goa(shot in that gaudy and gorged way that Indian cities always appear in Holywood films) where we see our amnesiac hero with his lady love(Franka Potente) in a situation that carries him forward since the last film. Immediately the film rushes us into situations that get the adrenaline soaring.

The narrative moves with ricocheting restlessness from city to city until it plonks itself boisterously at nerve-centre of Berlin where Jason Bourne finally licks and outwits his wounds that won’t heal.

What the film lacks is emotions. When for instance Bourne confesses to a young girl that he accidently both her parents, the tears dry up before they can register their protest and grief.

Besides Damon who’s bridled in his anguished aggression, Brian Cox is tremendously in character as the CIA villain . Joan Allen struggles hard to walk the tightrope between right and wrong in a role that becomes progressively central.

What gives the film its special and life-defying flavour are the cities across the world shot not with touristic curiosity but as mute characters serving as a makeshift base for the protagonist’s search for a home. The locations are angst-catching.