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