The Bourne Identity is part star power for Matt Damon, but it’s also an entertaining mystery-actioneer. Based off of Robert Ludlum’s best-selling spy novel, the Bourne Identity is also not completely accurate to its source material, which is obviously down to make it more fast-paced, and thus more pleasing to the audience.
The film opens in the Mediterranean Sea, where a French fishing ship picks up a wounded man adrift at sea, with two bullets in his back and a banking code inscribed in his hip. The man has no recollection of his past, having obviously come under a case of amnesia. Determined to discover who he is, the man goes to the bank inscribed in his hip, and discovers that he’s Jason Bourne, a 30 million dollar weapon for the US government, a part of a highly trained group of CIA assassins called Treadstone, and that the government believes he’s a spy gone bad who’s wanted dead. With literally the rest of Treadstone after him, Bourne teams up with a young German woman who gets caught up in the web of spy’s and counter spy’s, and must evade and outrun the CIA while trying to discover who he is and searching for the next clue.
The Bourne Identity is all in true spy fashion directed by Doug Liman. Damon, a very talented and accomplished actor in Hollywood, comes in good, if not in perfect confidence (something he later takes care of in both of the sequels). Franka Potente plays Marie, the German gypsie woman who gets caught up with him. Brian Cox is the head of the CIA Brian Cox, and Chris Cooper plays Alexander Conklin, the head of Treadstone and Bourne’s immediate superior.
The action scenes are made with profession, whether it’s a car chase in a European street or a shootout in an apartment building. The Bourne Identity is an engaging mystery action.
My biggest criticism of the movie is it trades in part of the original plot from the book in order to form a better crowd pleaser. The original book was more complex, elongated, and in many aspects better crafted. Considering that the plot has been radically adjusted to accomadate today's technology era (the book was published in the 80s), then the movie does a good enough job of accomplishing what it did. It makes a more audience friendly movie, though not what the author Ludlum imagined when he wrote the more complex book.
Originally, though wasn’t going to be any more sequels based off of the Bourne trilogy, but due to the movie’s unexpected success and Hollywood’s usual hunger for more money (sequels always accomplish the task), the Bourne Supremacy and the Bourne Ultimatum were released to critical and financial success. The Bourne series are noted for its own sense of realism and realistic fight sequences. As we look at some other action flicks out lately, we can all notice the use of computer generated sequences (CGI) to fill out ‘the blanks’ that can just as easily be done realistically with real stunts and real actors. Not only has the Bourne Identity proven that, but it’s a valuable piece of stepping stone that leads the way to the two sequels, both of which followed it in similar tradition.
The Bourne Identity is a successful, skillful spy, mystery actioneer that today stands as the starting point for the Bourne film series that was strong in its use of action sequences. The results aren’t masterful, but it’s in true spy action form.
****/5
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