Bourne Supremacy

The Bourne Supremacy is a pretty fucking good movie. That's it. I don't have a funny joke to make. What I have is a question for some of you: what the fuck's your problem? Haven't you ever seen a guy who cut his own hair before?

Button inventory is at fever pitch at Hancock Fabric and the Mrs. has been working 16 hours a day, coming home, going straight to sleep and tossing and turning all night long, muttering "small assorted novelties, large assorted novelties. Who mixed the small and large, dammit?,Pearl, 16 pearl, no, 17, I dropped one." She usually cuts my hair with the Flowbie, but now she doesn't have time for me. Well, she says she'd have more time for me if I didn't call her at the store every hour asking which jars in the kitchen are okay to eat, and if they'd go well on chips. Sorry, but if they don't want you to eat it, they shouldn't but floor wax in the same size jars as dip.

This morning she leaves me fifteen dollars for a haircut. That's a lot of money. Last time I got my haircut at the barber's it was $5.25 and that's if you didn't make a big stink about your sideburns being uneven. At some point during the day I had the intention of going up to Arvada Barbers, but then I realized she gave me $15 and told me to get a haircut. She didn't say I had to use the money for it. The money is simply my reward for getting it done, by all means necessary.

So I cut my own hair. Being married to a lady who works at a fabric store has some big-ass advantages, the main one being we have a shitload of scissors around the house. Man, it's a good thing we don't have a kid or she would have cut herself to ribbons by now. Anyway, it looked pretty fucking good in the mirror. Yeah, I could tell it was maybe a little uneven. I cut some more, and it started looking kind of crappy. You know, lopsided, and blotchy, like a gorilla that's been picked over by its mother. And I left a bald spot on the back because I couldn't see what I was doing. But who the fuck looks at the back of a person's head?

Assholes do, like the Harelip and Worm. The same assholes that take the piss out of you when you strut into the Tavern with fifteen bones in your pocket by asking, "What happened? What did you cut your own hair?"

If someone's hair looks so shitty you can tell he cut it himself, have the fucking courtesy to not mention it. Nobody cuts their hair unless they have to for economic or political reasons, and to point it out is tacky. It's like saying, "Why are you so skinny? No money for food?" Or "Why are you imprisoned in this shithole for protesting? Live in a police state?" Okay, I'm not a political prisoner but Harelip and Worm didn't know that. They should shut the fuck up. My hair will grow back (except the spot I burned with the curling iron because I thought people would be so surprised to see my hair curly they didn't notice it was fucked up), but Harelip won't ever grow back her manners.

I wear my bad hair with pride, and the buzz that fifteen dollars worth of Bud taps can buy. The whole incident still left a bad taste in my mouth until I saw The Bourne Supremacy. That cheered me up. Plus it's dark in the theater and strangers stopped whispering about my haircut once the lights went down.

This is a sequel to The Bourne Identity, both are based on Robert Ludlum novels about a rogue CIA super assassin. The basic story idea of a man trained to be a brainwashed superkiller for the CIA who then gets amnesia is sort of lame. But it works here and in the first one because these movies are really fucking smart. Take a movie with good action, and replace all the dumb-ass plot contrivances with smart and believable twists. You've got this movie, one where they actually gave a rat's ass about the script.

At the end of The Bourne Identity, Matt Damon's rogue, amnesiac agent Jason Bourne had a tacit understanding with the CIA that he'd disappear and they wouldn't chase him. The new movie starts with him living on the shore of the Indian Ocean, minding his own business until a killer plants his fingerprint at a crime scene. Soon after, a hitman comes looking for him and accidentally kills his girlfriend. Now he's out for revenge. For sure, that's a plot point we've seen before. In fact, wasn't there a shitty movie starring Vin Diesel based on that old chestnut last year?

Damon follows the lead to an ambitious agent at the CIA who is working the case, and that leads him deeper into a conspiracy to have him blamed for murder and eliminated to clear some very important people.

It doesn't sound like much, but I'll be fucked with a file if it the movie's greatness isn't in the details. The movie moves as fast as a duck with a firecracker up its ass, And the action is based on intelligent and believable decisions. That's really what makes this movie so fucking good. None of this shit where the characters do whatever illogical thing is necessary to lead into some big explosion. Instead, there's a shitload of action, but it's both surprising and makes sense. And as clever as it is, the movie never shoves it in your face like a stripper's tits.

There are a couple of decent car chases, but I thought they were distractions. The movie's highpoints are its smart surprises, and the chases feel like a bone thrown to the people who don't like Graham Greene-caliber intrigue. A lot of the action is overdirected, too. While it's good, it can be confusing because of the fucking handheld shots and billions of cuts and edits. Granted, I'm not the sharpest rock in the garden, but I found it a bit confusing.

One of the nicest things about this movie is its locales. Rather than the same LA and New York shit we keep seeing, it crosses Europe, from Amsterdam to Munich, Berlin and Moscow. And Damon's character hides where it's easiest: in crowds. Nearly every scene is in crowds or crowded places, which makes the action more exciting to me.

Damon once again proves that he's a better actor than his childhood sweetheart Ben Affleck. I realize I could say that I saw a horse shit and that was better than Ben Affleck, but Damon can actually act. He isn't mugging, he doesn't look confused when trying to be subtle, and he has the right amount of tension to play a confused man who is conditioned to kill. Plus, he's way more dreamy than Ben.

The Bourne Supremacy is a good fucking flick. Four Fingers. I may go see it again, not completely because I loved it but because when you're sitting in the dark people don't see your hair.