I have found that the best way to judge a sequel is to watch it right after it’s predecessor. I really enjoy well thought out spy movies and have been looking forward to seeing the “Bourne”series for a while.

I’m not a huge fan of James Bond or that genre. Yeah, he’s got cool toys and gets all the chicks, but it’s just too predictable and silly. Why drop the guy into a pool of sharks or tie him to a table under an elaborate super laser, when you could just finish him off with a .32 slug to the forehead? Maybe I’m just too smart for Hollywood. But, then there are movies like “The Bourne Identity” and its sequel “The Bourne Supremacy”. The best of this genre are always based on spy novels, probably because people who read are also too smart for Hollywood.

This series concerns a poor fellow who’s lost his memory, Jason Bourne. He doesn’t know who he is or why he was found floating in the Mediterranean with bullets in his back, but he does know how to kung-fu the crap out anyone who tries to push him around, even though he’s not sure how he knows or why so many folks are trying to push him around.

As the story unfolds you find out that he is a government funded assassin. (That’s about the only predictable thing in the whole series.) And, since the government has lost track of him, they assume he’s become a rogue agent. Their solution? Kill him, of course. (Okay, I guess that was a little predictable too.)

The cinematography, the script, the special effects, and even the acting are all superb. The fight scenes were probably some of the best I’ve ever seen, not only in the choreography, but in the way they were shot. Everything happens quickly and is shot up close which quick movement as if you were standing between the guys while they punched, kicked and stabbed. Very exciting.

In the DVDs extra features, I learned why. These movies were directed by a couple of guys outside the Hollywood scene. They were indy directors who wanted their movies to look like indy films. They went out of their way to avoid Hollywood camera work, Hollywood scene blocking, and Hollywood predictability. Even the dialog was minimally directed. Let the actors act. And boy does it work!

Lumping these two flicks together for one rating is a bit unfair. Each of them is really good in its own right. Each of them is good enough to sit on the same shelf will all the great Clancy movies. (And Matt Damon is seriously threatening Harrison Ford, in my mind, for the perfect spy movie actor. Not overtaking, but threatening.) However, I do recommend watching the two in sequence to make them easier to follow, the same as I would recommend for the Lord of the Rings trilogy (even though it is a 15 hour marathon). I gave LotR five grins, and I’m hesitant to put Borne on such a high pedestal. But they really are excellent films, so I must relent and award only the second ever five grin rating.