Assassins aren't supposed to have a conscience. It tends to get in the way of their killing people. Nevertheless, Jason Bourne [Matt Damon] has gone through a dastardly CIA black-ops program, becoming its most lethal human weapon, and come out the other side with his soul clinging to a single precious thread of humanity.

While the details of the nefarious program are never delineated, the filmmakers tell us that, should THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM (the third book in the Robert Ludlum's Bourne trilogy) ever get made, we might get a peek inside it. This time around, Jason Bourne is on a mission with two objectives: revenge against the people who made him a killer, and atonement to those he has hurt in his former career.

Bourne could be considered a modern American answer to James Bond, without the misogyny or midget-toting supervillains. In place of goofy gadgetry, you'll find inventive ways of spicing up the spy genre; creative weaponry being one. A killer like Bourne would no doubt well-schooled in 'field accessible weaponry'...ie, killing someone with whatever might be lying around, and while murder isn't funny, fans of action films should pay attention for inventive use of a magazine / toaster combo that has to be a first in film.

Along with all the clandestine clamoring about, there is a car chase that must be seen to be believed. Using THE FRENCH CONNECTION as a template, this street-level smash-up spares us the explosions and spoons on the speed. Note to anyone who gets motion sick: slap on a Dramamine patch before you take in this flick; one viewer, during said car chase, turned her dinner into technicolor floor art after the cinematography made her a bit woozy.

Read on for Damon's comments on his life philosophies, the status of his next project with Ben Affleck, and playing a cold, calculating killer (against type, of course)...

Q: From Chasing Amy, through to The Bourne Supremacy, can you tell us a little about how you've dealt with your success, and what you're looking forward to in your career.

Matt Damon: I guess in terms of picking jobs, whatever philosophy I've had hasn't really changed. At first, it was take any job that I can get. Since GOOD WILL HUNTING, since I've been offered movies and haven't had to go hustle and audition for them, there are basically just three things that I look for: a script that I like, a good director, and a good role. Usually, I'll settle for any two of those, because the combination of all three is really hard to come by. THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY had all three. It was a really great role and different than anything I'd normally get a chance to do. My philosophy hasn't changed. Whatever success or failure I've had has always been with those things in mind.

Movies that didn't do well at all, like ALL THE PRETTY HORSES...there's a version of that movie that's Billy Bob [Thornton]'s cut of it that exists that I really do love. I'm happy that I did that movie, I'm still really proud of that movie, in that form, that nobody ever saw. I got a lot out of it. It's weird to talk about my career in terms of my success, because really recently, right before THE BOURNE IDENTITY came out, I hadn't been offered a movie in a year because THE LEGEND OF BAGGER VANCE had come out and bombed, and ALL THE PRETTY HORSES had come out and bombed, and the word on THE BOURNE IDENTITY that it was going to tank also, because we had pushed back the release date a couple of times. People thought that was a sign that things weren't going well.

In fact, Universal had given us more money to go back and re-shoot, and pick up a couple of things that we needed, that were making the movie a lot better. We were holding the movie for the right reasons, but the outward signals from the industry were that [the movie] was going to suck. Nobody gave me any job offers for quite some time, so I went and did a play in London, and we closed on a Saturday night, and BOURNE had opened that Friday. By the time I got back to New York...Sunday night, Monday morning there were something like thirty script offers. In terms of any success that I've had, it's always tenuous. I don't think anyone feels secure.

Q: Will you be getting back to work with Kevin Smith at all?

MD: Well, I was in JERSEY GIRL, and yeah, I'm always ready to do whatever Kevin wants. He normally is very good about giving me something to do in his movies. In the case of DOGMA, he gave me a big role. I'm sure one of these days...Kevin kind of writes what's going on in his life. Obviously with JERSEY GIRL, when he became a father, he started ruminating about what would happen if he lost Jen[nifer Schwalbach-Smith], and suddenly JERSEY GIRL came out of that. If Kevin keeps living his life, maybe a role will come out that he offers to me. The second that he does, I'll take it.

Q: Ben Affleck had talked about the fact that you and he were faxing script pages back and forth for awhile, working on another story that was set in Boston. What ever came of that? Has there been any progress on that screenplay?

MD: I think the one Ben was talking about was the Dennis Lehane novel that he had, GONE BABY GONE. He's got the rights for that one. I don't know what's really going on with that right now. A lot depends on if he wants to be in it or if he wants to direct it. I've been so busy doing all these other movies that we haven't had time to sit down and do any writing for [quite] some time. I saw him last night, and it's something we talk about every time I see him. We wan t to do it. It's just a matter of handling the logistics and figuring out a way to get us in the same place in the same time. One of the things is, even though now it's been about seven years that we've both been working consistently, having struggled for so long through our teens and early twenties, it's kind of an anathema to us to turn down work. That's what I think we'll have to do to write something. We'll just have to block out the time, and commit to it.

Q: Do you have a strong desire personally to get back to writing?

MD: Yeah. I think the most creatively fulfilling experience for us was GOOD WILL HUNTING, just because we took an idea from the very beginning and shepherded it all the way through until it was a film. That's just really incredibly fulfilling to do that.

[A tape stops on the desk, and Damon stops to flip it].

That's how we used to write, actually. We'd have one of these things, and we'd improvise all the scenes using one of those little guys...

Even now, we'll have a lot of creative input with the directors that we work with. It's a collaborative feeling. With BOURNE, I was involved in a lot of ways. But at the end of the day, it's a director's vision, and it's got to be because it's a director's medium. There's no getting around that you're kind of hired labor. In terms of writing, and bringing something all the way from the beginning to finished form, is a feeling that we both want to have again.

Q: You played this role against type. What sort of work did you do to get past that?

MD: It was a big concern when I took the job the first time. It was something that Doug Liman, who was the director of the first movie, and I talked a lot about. He thought it was daring to cast me as this guy, because of the way I look. I look so young, and this guy clearly has to have a history, and he's got a very dark past. People don't look at me and necessarily think that. There was a lot of stuff physically in terms of getting ready. We tried to look at every aspect of how to make this guy as believable as possible. The worst thing that can happen is that you've got a good movie, but the central character's just not believable and he's constantly taking your audience out of the movie, that's a complete disaster. The movie will just fall apart. Doug came up with certain things. He watched boxing on television, and he like the way boxers walk. There was a directness and efficiency, and a kind of security in their bodies, and this kind of forward momentum in them that he really liked...

Q: Is that why you run in that way...

MD: Uh, no. I think that's just the way I run. [Laughs] I boxed for about six months before the movie. That really did help. I found that the way you move around other people is a very subtle thing. The sum total of a lot of those little subtleties are the difference between making something believable or not. A lot of the weapons training...little tips from the guy that I was training with. I put in so many hours. There was that one moment in [THE BOURNE IDENTITY] where he picks up a gun for the first time, and he throws it down. What it said in the screen direction was that it felt so comfortable in his hand he throws it down. From that moment on, any time he's holding a gun, it has to look like an extension of his arm. The only way to get around that was just to go to the firing range and put in hundreds of hours so I didn't have to think about the gun. It was just there. It would never be pointed at anything I wasn't prepared to destroy. My right side would always be [protected].

For instance, if you see a cop off-duty at a bar, and you're having a conversation , you know they're a cop because they'll angle their bodies, and you'll know if they're right handed or left handed, because they'll angle their gun hip away if they're right handed, even if they're not wearing a gun. That's how you to talk to someone. [The gun] is incredibly deadly and harmful. You keep that away, and you keep your distance, and it's always available to you and not to them. It's little things like that that kind of add up throughout the course of a movie. If you see somebody's body moving in a certain way, they're more believable. Doug's other theory, which we applied to this movie also, was that if it's a fight sequence or something like that, it's really important to have me doing it because audiences are smart enough that, when you cut to the shot of the really buff stunt man doing it, it's a giveaway. Even if they can't quite put their finger on it, it's just something that takes them out of the movie a little bit. Working on all that stuff to make sure that I could do it, and the other actor could do it, in a way that looked real and credible kept the illusion afloat.

Q: What was the appeal to returning to this role, and why is it exciting to explore a character who's an anti-hero?

MD: I said before there was no reason to make it unless we thought we could make it better than the first one. What I liked about it was the feeling that in a mainstream movie, something terribly wrong happens to you, and your first instinct is to go and get revenge, but if you just sit back and you think about it, and you start to look at yourself and your own life, and take responsibility for your own actions, the most important thing to do to be able to rejoin the human race is to atone for your own actions. The last shot of the movie is a shot of him walking and joining a sea of humanity in New York city, and that's the first time we see him in this country. I thought that was a good thing to put out there right now. I hope people accept that. Who knows what their reaction to the movie is going to be? But that was the reason to do the movie in this day and age, I thought that was a good thing to put out there. We take somebody who we've established as the ultimate American weapon, that that's the realization that he comes to: in the end, he does a very powerful thing. He does the only thing he can, which is attempt to atone, and start to redeem himself.

Q: Have you seen MATT AND BEN: The Play?

MD: I haven't seen it. I don't know...some people said it's funny, some people said it's kind of a knock. I just figure that it's an extension of PROJECT GREENLIGHT, it's the chance to get people a job. [Laughs]

Q: Have your comments in DOWN AND DIRTY PICTURES [by Peter Biskind] changed your relationship with Miramax at all?

MD: I don't think so. I don't think I said anything too incendiary there, actually. What I said about Harvey, I really feel: basically that he's an incredible businessman and that you have to be aware of that when you're dealing with him.

Q: How is OCEAN'S 12 going?

MD: We're about 75% of the way through. We just came back from Europe, and we're finishing it up at Warner Brothers. It's been going great so far. Everyone's back for this one, plus Catharine Zeta Jones has a great role, and there are a few celebrity surprises.

Q: Can you talk about the emotional challenges playing this role? This time, it's as much about Bourne's moods as it is about Bourne' mind.

MD: One of the biggest challenges starting off, just as an acting thing, was the fact that I don't talk a lot in the movie. You can't really tell in the final movie, but reading the script, but I only have about four scenes in the movie where I speak, but I'm on screen for a lot of the movie. So that was a huge challenge. And it's a pretty dark journey that the guy goes on, so to get into that mindset every day, that was a huge challenge. The good news is that I kind of got my requisite amount of laughter in every day when I'd go home at night. I'd unwind a little bit and get on the phone and talk to people, and rejoin humanity for the evening.

It's a pretty heavy role this time around. Normally you look for those to play the contradictions. Normally you'll have some scenes of levity. This time it was pretty intense most of the way through, so that was kind of a challenge to get up and go to work and do that every day. What helped, incidentally, is that Berlin, in the winter, gets light at about nine in the morning, and get gets dark about three to three-thirty, and it's overcast. The kind of mood that we were all in for those months of shooting, we didn't see the sun for quite some time, so I think that was probably a subconscious aid throughout the shoot.

All told, THE BOURNE SUPREMACY is a must-see for Matt Damon fans. He's very present in this flick, doing most of his own stunts and combat. He plays the tortured Bourne in a restrained, economical manner that makes no use of that million-dollar Will Hunting smirk we're so used to seeing. As dark as the story is, the action moves at a swift pace; there's little time for Jason Bourne to do much soul searching or acting glum, which makes for a good summer popcorn flick with a brain.

You can spy THE BOURNE SUPREMACY in theaters on July 23rd, 2004.

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