MOVIE CAPSULES: The Bourne Supremacy

Published Friday, August 27, 2004

The Bourne Supremacy

In this smash-and-grab-you-by-the-throat action flick, style is meaning and that meaning is fast, fast, fast. A sequel to "The Bourne Identity," Matt Damon stars as a former CIA super spy caught in the ultimate pulp-existentialist quandary, coming to terms with his actions before getting amnesia. Director Paul Greengrass, who either has very creative attention deficit disorder or the fastest reflexes of anyone over 14, keeps his movie moving and then some. It isn't just paced and cut for maximum speed, with eye-blink edits and quicksilver camerawork, it's brilliantly paced and cut. The apotheosis of that style is an awesome car chase featuring a taxi, a sleek SUV and various pulverized cars. Based on the novel by Robert Ludlum.


Halle Berry is purrfect in the title role of this dandy summer diversion, which brings light-hearted sophistication and sweeping romanticism to a comic adventure. Before she's transformed into the superhuman Catwoman, Berry is a meek and mousy office worker at a cosmetics conglomerate about to launch a too-good-to-be-true face cream that guarantees it will reverse the aging process. Benjamin Bratt is Berry's dashing leading man.

A Cinderella Story

If you killed off Lizzie McGuire's entire family and sent her to live with an evil stepmother and two stepsisters in the Valley, you'd have the basic setup for this banal, contemporary update of the popular fairy tale that stars Hilary Duff, best known as the Disney Channel poster girl. Unfortunately, it feels like a pro forma TV movie from the get-go and relies almost entirely on Duff's likability to hold the audience's attention.


Skillfully directed by Michael Mann and featuring strong work by Jamie Foxx as a night shift cab driver and Tom Cruise as his all-night hit-man passenger, this sharp and exciting thriller examines the vast disconnected physical blackness that is Los Angeles at night as well as the murkier aspects of its characters' souls. The film would be as successful as it is without Cruise's powerfully confident performance to work off of. The actor changed his hair color to silvery gray, changed his character's moral outlook to pitch black, and made adroit use of his charisma and control to give us someone whose perfectionism has made him something of a star in his rarified profession.

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

Will Ferrell's latest and most successful bid at comic transcendence, takes place in a 1970s that's as seemingly shut off from reality as a TV sitcom. That's to the point since the movie's title character is cut from the same madras cloth as "The Mary Tyler Moore Show's" Ted Baxter. What takes the whole thing pleasurably over the top, turning a goof into a total gas, is the film's pitch-perfect absurdist comedy and warmth. Tightly directed by newcomer Adam McKay, a former head writer on "Saturday Night Live" who cooked up the screenplay with Ferrell.

I, Robot

"Suggested," as the credits put it, by Isaac Asimov's 1950 novel of the same title, directed by Alex Proyas and starring one of the most charismatic stars in movies, "I, Robot" seemed like a sure thing. Although Asimov's core conceit remains intact the movie essentially plays out like an off-the-rack 1990s action flick. Despite some futuristic flourishes and disappointingly drab special effects, the movie world of tomorrow doesn't look all that different from the movie world of yesterday.

Will Smith stars as a Chicago detective who discovers that the latest robot models, though hardwired for submission, may no longer be under control.