The Bourne Supremacy: Good Spies, Bad Spies, Amoral Spies

This review was published originally on cinekklesia on August 4, 2007.

So cinekklesia's founder asked me to write a review of Paul Greengrass's The Bourne Supremacy (2004) in anticipation of this weekend's release of the third installment in the series: The Bourne Ultimatum. I must confess an initial bit of apprehension on my part: what, after all, can one say about Supremacy? Does it tackle any interesting philosophical questions? Does one learn anything profound about the human condition from watching Jason Bourne's exploits around the world?

Not really. Supremacy is simply a continuation of The Bourne Identity. Those who have seen the first installment know that Mr. Bourne (Matt Damon) suffers from amnesia but slowly gains knowledge of his past as a specially-trained CIA assassin (specifically employed by the Agency's super-secret Treadstone project). All sorts of nefarious characters from his past want him dead, and he spends the movie trying to get to the bottom of his mysterious life — while, of course, deftly evading capture (there are advantages to being a specially-trained assassin). Chase, chase. Punch, punch. Bang, bang. Done! End of movie.

What is interesting to observe, perhaps, is the way in which Supremacy coheres with the typical spy-movie formula. First, it follows the notion that the world is nothing more than a playground for the world's elites and the agents who they employ. The characters in Supremacy visit a dizzying array of locales, raising havoc wherever they go. The history, culture, and people of the particular locations hold almost no importance; they simply serve as backdrops (obstacles?) to the agents fulfilling their mission. Of course, within the spy-movie universe, the plenitude of locations is supposed to add excitement to the enterprise (and it does), but the moviemakers usually neglect to raise the important moral problem of treating the ordinary peoples of the world as mere props.

Supremacy also follows the classic good-spy/bad-spy motif. Being a U.S. film, the Americans are, on the whole, portrayed in a positive light — at least they operate under good intentions. The Treadstone project is not the norm; it was an aberration perpetuated by a few rogue agents (bad apples) who did not follow Agency protocol. The project ended up severely disrupting some lives and completely destroying others, and the "good" agents of the CIA are shown trying to get to the bottom of the truth. While the bad agents want Bourne dead (since he is the evidentiary link to the naughty deeds of the past), the good ones want to make some amends (albeit off-the-record).

The problem with the good-spy/bad-spy motif lies in the fact that it ignores larger questions of both government policies and the practice of spying itself. The CIA may have some rogue agents, but it nevertheless falls under the side of the "good." This is America, after all, and despite some moral lapses, like Abu Ghraib, it still tries to serve the best interests of the world, right? Beacon of Democracy? American spy movies largely do not question these assumptions, which is understandable since we American moviegoers (ticket buyers) want to believe that we are a good lot. However, the assumption implies a transcendent, intrinsic good to the United States that simply isn't true. (Many Christians like to believe that the United States is a Promised Land, but there is no warrant for that view.) While it is wrong to blame the United States for every evil in the world, it is equally wrong to pretend that the U.S. is not like any other country: a nation-state trying to maximize its self-interest.

Finally, like most other spy movies, The Bourne Supremacy doesn't tackle a fundamental question that lurks behind the entire espionage enterprise: its morality. Biblically speaking, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with spying (e.g., see Numbers 13), but there seems to be a difference between Divinely motivated espionage and that conducted by the secular nation-states of our own day. After all, espionage involves breaking some law somewhere (if laws weren't being broken, then spying wouldn't need to be, well, secret), and if one is going to break a law, then it had better be for a defensible higher purpose. Furthermore, if one is going to spend his/her entire career as a spy for a government, then he/she had better be sure that said government is perfect; for if it is not perfect, then at some point the spy in question is going to be implementing/perpetuating immoral policy.

This, of course, isn't any different from other jobs and careers in which people occasionally find the actions of their employers to be distasteful, if not outright evil. Right or wrong, we at some point learn to hold our noses and live with the moral discrepancies in our lives; whether we like to admit it or not, we are all moral relativists. What is perhaps distinct about covert ops is the constant breaking of law. If one is going to break the law constantly, then the purpose of such illegal activity must be consistently good in order for the activity to be moral. Seeing as how that's impossible, then it seems that secret agents have to be, at some level, amoral. They may have built a moral universe in their own minds, convincing themselves of the rightness of their actions, but in reality, they subconsciously suppress questions of right-and-wrong, since those only gets in the way of the mission.

Of course, espionage and covert ops aren't going away anytime soon. As long as people (and, specifically, nation-states) distrust each other, we'll have spies to go along with our militaries. And, of course, spy movies are not going to change their money-making formula by asking hard moral questions. (Why should they? After all, I certainly plan to watch The Bourne Ultimatum.) However, we should be more honest about the nature of espionage: a sometimes (often?) ugly, amoral line of work. Just because we don't see the dirty work done in our name doesn't mean we have clean hands.