Bourne Identity, The (2002)

I haven’t seen the 1988 made-for-TV adaptation of Robert Ludlum’s "The Bourne Identity" and I’m willing to believe that most audiences would deem Doug Liman’s version the more entertaining.  This however I suspect is more to do with vastly improved movie-making technology than anything particularly original, inventive or even satisfying here.

Matt Damon plays Jason Bourne, a CIA assassin who has lost his memory after a failed mission. His bosses fear that he is a loose cannon and decide to take him out as Jason tries to work out who is trying to kill him and how to stop them.

Of course one shouldn’t take the action genre seriously but The Bourne Identity has a couple of major credibility issues. One is why the CIA, with their vast resources in technology and manpower, are unable to either a) get Bourne to come in peacefully or b) whack him.  One of the most ludicrous moments in the film comes early in the piece when an assassin with a machine gun crashes through the French windows of Bourne’s Paris apartment, proves incapable of killing his target, then commits suicide by throwing himself out of some other French windows (as you do). There just had to be a better way.

The second problem is the pairing of Bourne with a German itinerant, Marie (Franka Potente).  Potente came to everyone’s attention for Run Lola Run but here her trademark punk persona is ill-suited to be either an action partner for Bourne (essentially she just goes along for the ride) or his romantic interest, her presence feeling more like an audience-appealing strategy than anything in the service of good action or sexual chemistry.

For the rest, the film is a dutiful assemblage of more or less familiar action sequences occasionally flipping back to the CIA’s mission control where Chris Cooper spits out a lot of hackneyed jargon about such spy practices as "staying low" and spars with his patrician boss (Brian Cox), as Bourne single-handedly stays at least two or three steps ahead of the entire task force. 

Liman keep the pace moving but it's all rather superficial stuff and nonsense and there’s really nothing that you haven’t seen before (Andrew Davis's 1993 film The Fugitive came to mind) or couldn't do without seeing again.

 

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