The Bourne Identity Movie Review:


Most movie going audiences have seen Hollywood films, mostly thrillers, that revolve around a character with amnesia or mistaken identity. Some films with these elements have worked and some have not. The most recent film that worked very well with the concept of “not remembering” was last year’s great thriller Memento (2001). Universal rolls the dice with the new spy film The Bourne Identity, which stars Matt Damon and is directed by Doug Liman.

The film is based on the 1980 best-selling spy novel by Robert Ludlum. The story was first brought to visual life on television as a mini-series in the late eighties with Richard Chamberlain in the lead role.

The story opens with fisherman in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea finding a young man, Jason Bourne (Damon), barely alive with two bullet holes in his back. As a crew man takes out the bullets he also finds a capsule slightly under his skin with a code to a Swiss bank account in it. The mysterious man regains conscious and can not remember who he is or what happened to him. He is ultimately left with the bank account as his only clue to helping him remember.

After easily going through high-tech security at the bank, Bourne is given his supposed deposit box. Inside he finds many passports of different nationalities with his picture on them along with large amounts of money from different countries, as well as a gun. With nothing left except a choice of chance he picks the passport of Jason Bourne, who is an American living in Paris. However, as he calmly tries to leave the bank, he discovers his incredible instincts, such as knowing where all the exits are in the locale, martial arts, fighting techniques, and the ability to take down three-highly trained policeman without breaking a sweat.

Now with the feeling of the law and whoever else chasing him, Bourne gives a lonely woman named Marie (Potente) twenty-thousand dollars to give him a ride from Switzerland to Paris. The other side of the film surfaces around the CIA agents that are trying to track Bourne and eventually want to kill him, in which the operation is lead by a demanding head officer named Ted Conklin (Cooper).

The film turns into a espionage, action, nostalgia tale of one man trying to find out who’s chasing him, why is he dangerous, and most of all who he is.

I found The Bourne Identity to be a thriller that just drags and really doesn’t conjure up a solid plot. Dealing with the concept of an amnesia ridden character, I believe if the film is either smart, like Memento (2001), or has a concrete use of the amnesia, like Conspiracy Theory (1997), and then it works very well. However, half-way through The Bourne Identity, I really didn’t care about what Jason Bourne was trying to figure out or remember. Honestly, his whole secret is clichéd and pretty predictable.

Some of the action and in your face fight scenes that director Doug Liman creates are enjoyable, but I hardly felt any type of tension throughout this film. The Bourne Identity is an international espionage thriller that barely thrills. Doug Liman is a director that I really like though. I just don’t agree with this film to be the one for him to break into Hollywood blockbuster mode with. Liman is an independent filmmaker that directed two amusing films, Swingers (1996) and Go (1999). He took on this project to make his crossover jump from independent to feature films. I read from some sources on the Internet that Liman had disagreements with the studio over the editing of The Bourne Identity. In which, the studio having control is the difference from feature and independent films.

Besides the lack of tension, I believe most of the film’s problems arise from the script by Tony Gilroy and William Blake Herron. I have not read the novel by Robert Ludlum, so I have no comment on how well the story was adapted. I honestly felt that there would be more build up to who Jason Bourne is, along with more brains to the plot points and character relationships. The characters are aware of what is going on in the story, but also seem to be missing in action at moments. The pace and plot points also take along time to develop, which leads the film to be boring at times.

Matt Damon is an established actor that is convincing as Jason Bourne. However, looking at Damon’s past acting choices, I wouldn’t have predicted him taking on a role in a studio film like this one. Franka Potente, Chris Cooper, Clive Owen and Brian Cox do what they can with the material that they are given as the supporting cast of the film. I did like Gosford Park (2001) star Clive Owen for the time that he was on the screen as an assassin referred to as The Professor.

The Bourne Identity is a dry and lame thriller that has brief moments of shine and promise. The film has a good cast and a good director helming it, but the film comes up short of being a successful and intriguing thriller. I recommend seeing The Sum of All Fears (2002) over The Bourne Identity, which is a much better thriller film that is out in theaters right now.

Joseph Tucker

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