Jason Bourne

Robert Ludlum's lucky 13th nail-nibbler, The Bourne Supremacy (Bantam, $4.95), is a sequel - his first - to The Bourne Identity. If you haven't yet read Identity, I don't want to spoil the fun, so maybe you can skip the next few sentences. In the first work, a character called Jason Bourne was created by U.S. intelligence to flush out that infamous terrorist, Carlos the Jackal. And who was Jason Bourne? A world-class assassin-for-hire with nearly 40 kills to his credit? Nah. A poor chap named David Webb, who, in Supremacy, turns out to be a basket case.

Best-selling suspense novelist Robert Ludlum, 73, author of the Jason Bourne series of spy thrillers and The Matarese Circle, died yesterday. The cause of death is believed to be a heart attack, said Matthew Shear, a spokesman of Mr. Ludlum's publisher, St. Martin's Press. "It's a horrible loss for all of his fans and for his publisher," Shear said. "Fortunately, he had been working on several books, and to honor him we're going to continue to publish him. " Readers can expect at least three more novels, Shear said.

Every decade or so, a new style takes over the movies; from static talkies in the '30s to widescreen epics in the '50s to today's hyperkinetic films with a thousand cuts. And there will always be directors who want to try something older, like one movie new to video this week that recalls the gritty thrillers of the '70s. With its location photography, wild car chases and hard-hitting fistfights, "The Bourne Identity" (VHS: priced for rental; DVD: $26.99) owes more to William Friedkin and "The French Connection" than director Doug Liman's other films, such as "Go. " Based on a typically credulity-stretching Robert Ludlum novel, the plot follows Jason Bourne (Matt Damon)

Our suspicions were correct: whoever wrote the screenplay for "The Bourne Supremacy" was a big fan of "The Manchurian Candidate. " When we finally learned the dark secret to Jason Bourne's brainwashing/indoctrination/identity, it looked a lot like the dark secret harbored by Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey in John Frankenheimer 's 1962 classic. A movie that happens to be one of the favorite films of screenwriter Tony Gilroy , one of the guiding lights behind the profitable Bourne series and writer-director of the new George Clooney movie "Michael Clayton.

It's not until the second-to-last shot of the lean, mean, most excellent The Bourne Ultimatum that somebody cracks a smile. But still, this clench-jawed thriller - with Matt Damon as the somebody's-messed-with- my-head secret agent known as Jason Bourne - is unstoppable fun. Jumping from Moscow to Langley, Va., to Turin, to Paris to London's Waterloo Station, all before most flicks have finished their "produced by" credits, The Bourne Ultimatum...

Matt Damon doesn't resemble a natural-Bourne killer. He has the neutral face of a tool missing a necessary component. This works for him well in The Bourne Supremacy, where he puts you in mind of a slate needing chalk, a car lacking an accelerator, a gun without ammo. Because, as with the 2002 hit The Bourne Identity, likewise based on a Robert Ludlum thriller, the running (and panting and hyperventilating) motif of Supremacy is that amnesiac Jason Bourne possesses tools he didn't know he had - and the skills to play them like a virtuoso.

Jason Bourne has a problem. He doesn't remember who he is; he doesn't even remember that he has been shot at and tossed into the sea. He doesn't find out his name is Bourne until two hours into "The Bourne Identity," a two-part mini-series airing Sunday and Monday nights at 9 on Channel 6. But, by that time, he has learned that his face has been altered by plastic surgery, that his dental work is expensive and unusual and that he has some remarkable...

"Law Abiding Citizen" was filmed in Philadelphia, and that's great for the local economy, but not so great for local moviegoers. Philadelphians will be scratching their heads at the movie's Bizarro World version of our city - like the gigantic prison that has been digitally installed next to City Hall, where the Ben Franklin Parkway should be. And apparently it's the only jail in town. Everybody goes there. And the same judge presides over all trials. The movie also commences with the lethal injection of a guy who goes from convicted to dead in record time, although Pennsylvania hasn't executed a prisoner in 10 years.

'Who are you? What's your name?" asks the fisherman who has plucked the floater out of the Mediterranean, picked a couple of bullets from his back, and nursed the stranger to health as the boat chugs homeward to Marseilles. "I don't know," says the fellow, and clearly he doesn't. Amnesia, one of Hollywood's hoariest devices, spins the plot wheels of The Bourne Identity, a nimble spy thriller adapted from the Robert Ludlum best-seller and starring Matt Damon as the operative with the identity crisis.

"Law Abiding Citizen" was filmed in Philadelphia, and that's great for the local economy, but not so great for local moviegoers. Philadelphians will be scratching their heads at the movie's Bizarro World version of our city - like the gigantic prison that has been digitally installed next to City Hall, where the Ben Franklin Parkway should be. And apparently it's the only jail in town. Everybody goes there. And the same judge presides over all trials. The movie also commences with the lethal injection of a guy who goes from convicted to dead in record time, although Pennsylvania hasn't executed a prisoner in 10 years.

One of movie hero Jason Bourne's best assets is Dan Bradley, assistant director on The Bourne Ultimatum, who receives proper credit for his contributions on the just-released DVD. The amnesiac Bourne (Matt Damon) is a U.S.-trained political assassin who is trying to recall and deal with who he was. And while in the three movies - The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and Ultimatum - Damon has shown plenty of brains, Bradley and his cohorts supply the ample brawn. Bradley choreographed the chase sequences: Bourne on a minibike speeding through the crowded, narrow streets of Tangiers, on foot jumping over the city's rooftops, and then driving a police car in New York.

Our suspicions were correct: whoever wrote the screenplay for "The Bourne Supremacy" was a big fan of "The Manchurian Candidate. " When we finally learned the dark secret to Jason Bourne's brainwashing/indoctrination/identity, it looked a lot like the dark secret harbored by Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey in John Frankenheimer 's 1962 classic. A movie that happens to be one of the favorite films of screenwriter Tony Gilroy , one of the guiding lights behind the profitable Bourne series and writer-director of the new George Clooney movie "Michael Clayton.

It's not until the second-to-last shot of the lean, mean, most excellent The Bourne Ultimatum that somebody cracks a smile. But still, this clench-jawed thriller - with Matt Damon as the somebody's-messed-with-my-head secret agent known as Jason Bourne - is unstoppable fun. Jumping from Moscow to Langley, Va., to Turin, to Paris to London's Waterloo Station, all before most flicks have finished their "produced by" credits, The Bourne Ultimatum offers...

Sequels + remakes + blockbusters + spin-offs = Summer Movies. Take that formula to the Nth power and you have what's lined up, like jets coming into Philly International, from May through August. Beginning Friday with Spider-Man 3 - which, accurately or not, is being called one of the most expensive Hollywood endeavors ever (official price tag: $270 million) - and heading to Labor Day, the screens will be alive with the tried and the true, the proven and the bankable.

In the second of a possible three-film set, the amnesia-stricken anti-Bond, Jason Bourne (Matt Damon), returned to theaters last summer, once again leaving foes unconscious or worse. Thanks to plenty of extras, the DVD release of The Bourne Supremacy poses no such threat to viewers. While not as good as Identity's disc - the first was the better film, after all - the Supremacy DVD holds it own. The featurettes, though sufficient, are cut up into finger sandwiches, instead of compiled into the "everything" hoagie it should've been.

Matt Damon doesn't resemble a natural-Bourne killer. He has the neutral face of a tool missing a necessary component. This works for him well in The Bourne Supremacy, where he puts you in mind of a slate needing chalk, a car lacking an accelerator, a gun without ammo. Because, as with the 2002 hit The Bourne Identity, likewise based on a Robert Ludlum thriller, the running (and panting and hyperventilating) motif of Supremacy is that amnesiac Jason Bourne possesses tools he didn't know he had - and the skills to play them like a virtuoso.

As summer movie sequels splash across big screens nationwide, studios are complementing (and milking) their franchises with new DVD releases. A new version of Pitch Black preceded its successor, The Chronicles of Riddick; a genetically enhanced Spider-Man DVD came out weeks before its record-breaking follow-up; and now comes The Bourne Identity Explosive Extended Edition, just in time for The Bourne Supremacy, in theaters next Friday. Based on the first in a series of books by Robert Ludlum, the initial Bourne stars Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, an assassin with amnesia.

Every decade or so, a new style takes over the movies; from static talkies in the '30s to widescreen epics in the '50s to today's hyperkinetic films with a thousand cuts. And there will always be directors who want to try something older, like one movie new to video this week that recalls the gritty thrillers of the '70s. With its location photography, wild car chases and hard-hitting fistfights, "The Bourne Identity" (VHS: priced for rental; DVD: $26.99) owes more to William Friedkin and "The French Connection" than director Doug Liman's other films, such as "Go. " Based on a typically credulity-stretching Robert Ludlum novel, the plot follows Jason Bourne (Matt Damon)