The Bourne Identity (2002)

Directed by Doug Liman, starring Matt Damon

Plot summary: a wounded man without a memory is fished out the Mediterranean sea, who then finds himself chased by deadly assassins as he seeks to discover his past.

This is the spy movie that changed things for Hollywood action movies.  It has the same title as a spy novel written by Robert Ludlum that changed the way spy novels were written.  Interestingly, the title is about all the movie shares with the novel.  I exaggerate a bit, but not by much.  Let me explain.

I enjoyed The Bourne Identity.  A lot.  It has everything I love in an action film: great fights, frantic chases, quick thinking, and a simply fantastic car chase.  It keeps away from everything I hate about action movies: stupid plots, pathetic acting (or over acting), awful writing, terrible direction with horrid editing that disguises all the other rough edges.  Bourne worked into my heart, and I liked it greatly.

But the film has this one detail, a plot hole so deep and wide that I just couldn't get past it.  You see, Jason Bourne is a super spy.  He knows how to play the angles in any room, use anything for a weapon, can blend into the background or completely dominate physically.  He has an astounding ability to observe and memorize, as he himself admits and describes in one scene of the film.  So why would a guy who can memorize every license plate of the cars on the way into a diner need a fancy gizmo inserted into his hip with his bank account info on it?  Is he worried that he might forget his password?  You see, it irritated me to no end that this thing in his hip only seemed to be there in the rather unlikely eventuality that he would be wounded, recover, but lose his memory.  WHY IS THIS THING THERE??

So I read the book.  I simply had to find out if there was a rational explanation.  Turns out there is, though it is never discussed in the movie.  See, it's there as an insurance policy, where if Bourne ever was killed in action this thing in his hip would be found, his past discovered, and his name could be cleared.  Whew, one mystery solved, a host of others begun.

Understand, I read the book to understand the movie better.  But what I discovered is that the movie has almost no relationship with the book.  Sure, there's an amnesiac spy named Jason Bourne is in the book, as is a girl named Marie.  There is indeed something called Treadstone, and the CIA are involved.  The hip implant is there, and the beginning of the novel is very well represented in the film.  Other than that, there is nothing at all similar.  The plot is so divergent, so different, so unrelated that to say The Bourne Identity movie is based on the book is close to an outright lie.

So all that to make a judgement on the movie.  Is the movie any good?  Yes.  Yes.  Yes.
By no means is it perfect -the acting, while good, is often uneven.  The plot is convoluted, and the writing at times is not quite able to help you keep up too well.  And the romance side seems just a tad forced.  But on the whole, this is a well-done film.  Cinematography and editing a far above average, with some truly beautiful shots, complete with very nicely choreographed fight scenes.  Direction is great; plenty is done that is new and unique for action film.

What stands out is the humanity of the whole film.  It centers on one man and brings out his confusion quite well.  Action is great and frantic, but never for the sake of the action.  Everything centers around the man and his quest to know himself.  And when all the pieces come together the conclusion becomes unavoidable.

Bourne was a well-timed movie.  It found a niche, appealing to an audience loosing trust in the intelligence community after 9/11/01.  (Interestingly, just after 9/11 they shot a whole new ending, one that you might say makes the CIA into a "good guy" of sorts and helps build confidence in government security, but the original ending played better with audiences, so it stayed.)  And it reinvented the tired and stale spy thriller genre -Mission: Impossible 2 and the later Pierce Brosnan James Bond films released about the same time were more than a bit lackluster.  As such, The Bourne Identity is not just enjoyable; it is important as well.

Entertainment: 6/10
Artistic Value: 4/10
Technical Merit: 7/10

Overall: 6.5/10

Favorite Directors: Akira Kurosawa

So how do you choose what movies to watch?  Typically there are at least five major influences that convince me to watch a film:

1. I'm interested in the topic (AKA -"wow, that looks like something I'd enjoy!")
2. I'm a fan of the major actors (AKA -"Jimmy Stewart is in this!  Squeeeee!")
3. I'm with a group of friends, and they all insist on watching some terrible movie against my opinionated, yet correct, urging. (and that is how I was forced to watch the horrendous Wild Wild West more than once.)
4. It is made by a great director. (and thus I will watch anything that Christopher Nolan has made.)

We all have favorite directors.  My all time favorite has always been Alfred Hitchcock.  I've loved Alfred the Great since I first really encountered his work in high school.  

But right now I want to talk about a director that I've only recently discovered that has simply amazed me with his work.  I'm speaking of Akira Kurosawa.

I discovered Kurosawa in watching his magnificent epic Seven Samurai.  I'd long heard of SS, knowing how influential it was and how it was remade in America as the western The Magnificent Seven.  If you've heard of Seven Samurai and have not seen it, forget everything you have ever been told -it is far better than you could imagine.  It really deserves its own review sometime, but now suffice to say this; it is more magnificent than any remake.

Of course, one great film does not mean that a director is great.  Even bad directors sometimes strike gold, or as they say, even a blind squirrel can find a nut.  That is why I decided to check out more of Kurosawa's work.  Thus I watched Ran (the character "ran" in Japanese means something like "rebellion" or "betrayal"), Kurosawa's Japanese Samurai adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear.  If you're thinking that Samurai King Lear sounds awesome, that's because it is (and again, the sweepingly brilliant Ran deserves its own review).  Then I bought and watched The Hidden Fortress, a film that had strong influence over George Lucas as he wrote Star Wars.  There I marveled at Kurosawa's ability to develop strong characters and slowly ramp up action, then bring together action and tension in completely stunning ways.

It hit me sometime after watching The Hidden Fortress that I was becoming an enormous fan of Akira Kurosawa.  Clearly he had a pattern of greatness, evident even in the three that I saw at first.  If you think of great film making, nobody thinks of Japanese flicks from the 50's.  Yet in that period Kurosawa was making films that were not just better than what Hollywood was producing, they profoudly changed movie making itself.  The preeminent example is 1950's Rashomon, which was the single most influential film in bringing Japanese cinema to the West.

Kurosawa became friends with the American western director John Ford.  He was highly influenced by Ford's work, and then Kurosawa's work highly influenced Ford (and everyone else).  For myself, I know that my appreciation of good film has been enhanced since running into Kurosawa's work.  He was a genius, far ahead of his time, who made films that have simply made me sit back in wonder.

Watch out Hitchcock, Akira is gunning for your spot on my favorites list.

Life is busy

So it's been a while since I've posted.  Of course, I've had vacation, work, and a family with kids.  That means far too little time that you might describe in any charitable way as "free."  So when it comes to "how do I spend that free time?" the answer is more frequently "watch movies" rather than "write about movies I've watched."

So enough excuses.  I'll be writing, just about as often as I can.  Which is to say, infrequently and in spurts.