The Bourne Supremacy

The Bourne Supremacy is a 2004 American action/spy/conspiracy thriller film, the sequel to The Bourne Identity and the second installment in The Bourne Series. It was directed by Paul Greengrass and starred Matt Damon once again.

After a botched undercover mission, a CIA operations leader finds evidence that Jason Bourne (Damon) was responsible for killing their agents. He's not, but those who framed him also want to tie up loose ends and send an assassin (Karl Urban) to track him down and kill him. He survived their initial encounter but his beloved Marie (Franka Potente) gets killed in the process.

Angry and wroth with revenge, Bourne comes out of hiding to find the people who killed her and bring them to justice, and to also start making amends for past wrongs. This brings him into direct conflict with the remnants of Treadstone, from Berlin to Moscow.

Followed by The Bourne Ultimatum.

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This film provides examples of:

• Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene: Bourne's apology to Irena Neski following the big car chase in Moscow.
• Amnesiac Dissonance: After experiencing this in the first film and coming to terms that he was an assassin, Bourne again grapples with this as he remembers that he willingly signed up for the program.
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign:
  • While the name on Russian passport is no longer "Ащьф Лштшфум"(Aschf Lshtshfum) instead of "Фома Киняев"(Foma Kiniaev), as it was in The Bourne Identity, it still should be transliterated as "Kinyaev". A new mistake is also introduced in this movie in which his name in Russian is spelled as "Кинияев", which is wrong and would also be transliterated as "Kiniyaev".
  • Neski is not a real Russian surname. While it's not clear if that's what the script was going for, Nevsky would've been a more appropriate choice.
• Badass Normal: Kirill as an FSB agent and freelance assassin is the closest to a normal person among all the super operatives that Bourne has fought yet came the closest of anyone in killing Bourne.
• Batman Gambit: Bourne deliberately gets himself detained at Naples, anticipating that the right people would pick up on it. When they do, Bourne taps their phone conversations and learns their identities and probable locations, making tracking them easier.
• Bilingual Bonus: On Berlin, when Bourne meets with Nikki, the protestors's banners are references to public education, as a right and the need for it to be of high quality.
• Burn Baby Burn: Bourne burns Marie's passport and photographs after her death, except for one.
• Captured on Purpose: Bourne travels on a passport he knows is monitored and allows himself to be taken into custody; he then escapes, after cloning an agent's phone so he can monitor communications.
• Cassandra Truth:
  • Thanks to Abbott's antics, just about everyone believes that Bourne is coming to eliminate all of Treadstone of his own accord, even though he pleads ignorance to everything that's happened in his disappearance post-Identity and just wants to be left alone. Similarly, Bourne doesn't believe the Treadstone agents that the operation was shut down.
  • When Bourne notices Kirill looking out of place with the locals, he grabs Marie and start to drive them out of town. He frantically tells Marie someone is after them, but Marie is worried about him simply being paranoid, which is the last thing she conveys before she's immediately shot dead by Kirill.
• Death by Adaptation: In the original Ludlum novels Marie lived to the end of the trilogy (although she was kidnapped in The Bourne Supremacy). Here she's killed in the first act.
• Deceased Fall-Guy Gambit: Abbott tries to pin the Berlin assassination and the money theft on Conklin, who'd died in Identity, and Bourne, who was to be killed before the CIA could find him.
• Disposable Woman: Marie is killed in the film's first action sequence to motivate Bourne to come out of hiding.
• Dramatic Irony: Pamela Landy yelling at her team that they had absolute control over Bourne's life for decades, should be several steps ahead of him and won't be going home until they find Jason Bourne. When Bourne calls Landy's cellphone, the room is immediately a flurry of activity as they set up traces and try to find out where he is. Meanwhile, at the very same moment, he's set up a sniper rifle to target them from a building immediately across the street and is watching every move they make.
• Engineered Public Confession: Jason tricks Ward into revealing the truth by holding what seemed to be a pistol, but was actually a tape recorder.
• Happy Ending Override: After the first film, Bourne could settle down with his girlfriend and live a normal life. Until he dragged back in and his girlfriend is killed.
• Have You Told Anyone Else?: Danny Zorn pre-emptively fulfils this trope by explaining to his soon-to-be murderer Ward Abbott that he has yet to share the damaging information he's found.
• Heal It with Booze: After being shot, Bourne stumbles into a market and grabs several bottles of vodkas and a map, so he can attend to his wound and navigate the hell out of there while being car-chased by a world-class assassin.
• He Knows Too Much: Poor Dany Zorn, who correctly deduces that Bourne was framed and takes that information directly to Abbott, who set up the frame job.
• Improv Fu: Jason Bourne can beat the shit out of you with a rolled up magazine and blow up a condo with it when he's done killing you. It should be noted that this example isn't theoretical or exaggerated; it's something Bourne actually does.
• Injured Limb Episode: Hypertrained as he is, Bourne is still only a man; when he leaps from a bridge onto a barge to escape the police, he injures his leg and has a limp for the rest of the film.
• In Name Only: This film has even less to do with the plot of the corresponding novel than The Bourne Identity did: in The Bourne Supremacy, Marie was kidnapped in China but escaped, and Jason spent most of the book looking for her. Also, they were married, and Jason had learned his real name, David Webb, at the end of the first book.
• Info Dump: Landy looking through Treadstone files helps explain the aftermath of Identity to new viewers.
• Inspector Javert: Subverted with Pamela Landy; she initially serves as this towards Bourne, but eventually becomes convinced of his innocence and works to uncover the truth.
• Internal Reveal: Bourne learns about Conklin's death and Treadstone's shutdown, both of which occurred at the end of the first film 2 years earlier.
• It Works Better with Bullets: Bourne found Jarda's gun and emptied its bullets. Jarda noted how the gun felt light.
• Leave Behind a Pistol: Bourne does this for Ward Abbott, who uses it after realizing that Bourne recorded his confession and he'll soon be arrested.
• Off Bridge, onto Vehicle: Bourne jumps from a bridge onto a barge during the foot chase in Berlin. This gets his leg injured, as he has a limp for the remainder of the film as a result, though he still manages to escape from his pursuers. The barge is slow and the cops quickly call it to stop, so Bourne just sneaks out by climbing underneath the bridge.
• Possession Presumes Guilt: Jason Bourne remembers assassinating a Russian politician and his wife and making it look like a murder-suicide by placing the gun he used in one's hand.
• Posthumous Character: Everything that happens traces back to the assassination of Vladimir Neski, who'd been killed before revealing that Yuri Gretkov was using stolen CIA funds to buy up Russian oil leases. Jason soon uncovers that he himself was the one that killed Neski, in his very first Treadstone assignment.
• Precision F-Strike: Bourne himself delivers a powerful one at the end of an intense interrogation he conducts on Nicky Parsons. Considering how calm and stoic Bourne usually is in the second and third movies, it really signifies his emotional turmoil and hate for the CIA after losing Marie, the one person he came to really care for, all because Ward Abbott refused to leave him alone and sent an assassin to take him down, but ended up killing her instead by accident.
• Pretender Diss: Ward Abbott gives a scathing remark to Pamela Landy after she demands additional info about Bourne's case following their confrontation by phone.

  Abbott: You talk about this stuff like you read it in a book.

• Recycled Soundtrack: Much of the music written for the film was taken directly from the series' previous entry, with only minor expansions or adjustments. The closing credits song Extreme Ways is also re-used.
• Revealing Cover Up: Abbott and Gretkov sabotage a CIA buy of intel that would implicate them both; they arrange to have Bourne's prints planted at the scene to make it look like the work of a rogue agent with his own agenda. This only succeeds in getting Pamela Landy more interested in investigating Treadstone, as well as bringing Bourne out of retirement to clear his name.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The whole movie, albeit so cold and machine-like it seems he's lost his humanity until he spares Nicky after her interrogation, refuses to kill Ward Abbott and when he speaks to Irina Neski.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Marie, Danny Zorn and Ward Abbott.
• These Hands Have Killed: On the DVD commentary, Bourne's reaction after killing Jarda is described as a man that's fallen off the wagon.
• Trapped in a Sinking Car: Bourne's car goes careening off a pier due to the assassin that is trying to kill them. He escapes, but his girlfriend got fatally shot in the process.
• Trespassing to Talk:
  • Jason Bourne does this to a girl to confess to murdering her parents, since she believed it was a murder-suicide.
  • He also does this to Abbott, who naturally assumes that Bourne is there to kill him; Bourne is actually there to record a confession and Leave Behind a Pistol.
• Villains Out Shopping: Kirill's seen hanging out at a Moscow nightclub (in the middle of the day!) when Gretkov calls him back, telling him that Bourne is still alive.
• The Worf Effect: Bourne is incredibly cautious when he faces Jarda, with good reason. He's a particularly brutal fighter.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: The death of Marie at the start of the film.

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