The Bourne Identity

The Bourne Iden­tity is one rea­son it hasn’t been an appallingly awful sum­mer for grown-up movie­go­ers. Among the usual can­cer that infects and oozes from the mul­ti­plex this time of year have been sev­eral films that have dared to be sharp, almost brainy, this film included. Sand­wiched into a sum­mer that has included the vapid likes of The Scor­pion King, Bad Com­pany and Jason X, it’s a reliev­ing breath of air for a suf­fo­cat­ing film reviewer. But how could stu­dio exec­u­tives let a film that has brawn and brains be released dur­ing the sum­mer you ask? The world may never know.

Although it sets itself up to be a run-of-the-mill action flick, The Bourne Iden­tity hur­dled my expec­ta­tions and man­aged to grow a brain along the way thanks to the whip-smart direc­tion of indie fave Doug Liman. The gas pedal on this thriller is depressed slowly, and begins by show­ing Ital­ian fish­er­men off the south­ern coast of France spot­ting a dead man (Matt Damon) float­ing in the water. When they pull him aboard they real­ize that he’s not dead, just uncon­scious, with two bul­let holes in his back. The ship’s doc­tor goes to work on him, remov­ing the bul­lets and find­ing a small laser pointer with a Swiss bank account in it. The uncon­scious man comes back to the world of the liv­ing and can’t remem­ber any­thing that hap­pened to him pre­vi­ous to his being pulled from the Mediter­ranean. As soon his boat reaches port he speeds to the bank in Zurich where he finds a safety deposit box loaded with infor­ma­tion he hopes will solve many of his life’s rid­dles. The first pass­port he picks up shows his name is Jason Bourne and that he lives in Paris, but the box is loaded with pass­ports show­ing him with dif­fer­ent names and nation­al­i­ties. It also con­tains thou­sands of dol­lars in dif­fer­ent denom­i­na­tions and a pis­tol. At this point he doesn’t know who he really is or where he lives, but at least he’s wealthy.

Unlike his char­ac­ter in Good Will Hunt­ing, Matt Damon really isn’t stretched too much in the act­ing depart­ment here. Since he doesn’t know who he can trust all he needs to do is kick ass and look con­fused. He finds that he’s flu­ent in sev­eral lan­guages and that he can go toe-to-toe in sev­eral fight­ing styles. Not know­ing why he knows these things, he adapts to his sit­u­a­tion and keeps mov­ing, try­ing to make his way to Paris.

Star­ring:
Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Chris Cooper, Clive Owen, Julia Stiles, Brian Cox
Directed By:
Doug Liman
Release Date:
June 14, 2002
MPAA Rat­ing:
PG-13 for vio­lence and some lan­guage.
Dis­trib­u­tors:
Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures
3 Stars

The author­i­ties are pur­su­ing him like hun­gry dogs chas­ing a raw steak, so he pays a woman $10,000 to drive him to Paris. The woman, Maria (Franka Potente from Run Lola Run ) becomes his most trusted ally in his quest to find out who he really is. The body count starts climb­ing as hired killers from all over Europe con­verge upon Bourne to help him take the eter­nal dirt nap and keep him from obtain­ing this knowl­edge. The author­i­ties are led by Chris Cooper, who played the eth­i­cally torn sher­iff in Lone Star . His job here is to find out what Bourne knows and take him out by any means nec­es­sary if it’s required. He’s not evil, per se, but rather a gov­ern­ment man who needs to clean up a fouled up job before a Sen­ate sub­com­mit­tee finds out about the trouble.

As the token female/love inter­est Franka Potente was my favorite in this film as the stu­dent get­ting the screw job from the Amer­i­can embassy on a visa appli­ca­tion. Naïve and con­fused, she’s the audience’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the film. Find­ing her­self help­ing a man she doesn’t know and slowly (as in all movies) real­iz­ing that she has feel­ings for him, her char­ac­ter was the per­fect foil for Bourne since she knew only slightly less about the sit­u­a­tion than she did. Her strong female char­ac­ter is refresh­ing to see in a Hol­ly­wood movie, and she helps the audi­ence learn more by not know­ing any­thing about the situation.

The thrills in this film are exhil­a­rat­ing. Whether it’s a car plung­ing down a stair­case, a man jump­ing seven sto­ries while fir­ing a gun or two assas­sins pur­su­ing each other in an open field, it’s engross­ing. What Bourne is learn­ing for the first time the audi­ence is also learn­ing for the first time and his con­fu­sion and shock at the chase makes it invig­o­rat­ing to see.