The Bourne Identity

Year: 2002
Director: Doug Liman
Cast: Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Chris Cooper, Clive Owen, Brian Cox, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Julia Stiles

This may sound strange, but I'm probably the only guy who watched The Bourne Supremacy before The Bourne Identity. And I'm itching to catch The Bourne Ultimatum when it opens next week, so I had some catching up to do. So I got my hands on this film, to see where the great Jason Bourne came from.

The Bourne Identity begins somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea, where a group of fishermen find a man in the open water and bring him aboard. The doctor onboard finds two bullets in the man's back, and a capsule that emits a laser showing a Zurich bank account number. The man has no memory of who he is and where he's been before they found him.

The fishermen bring him to land, and the man makes his way to Switzerland. He finds his way to the bank and opens the safe deposit box assigned to the number, and finds a gun, lots of cash and six passports with his picture in them, all with different names. He assumes the name of the American passport, Jason Bourne, then takes the passports and money, and leaves. However, his employers are keeping track of his movements closely, and before long they attempt to kill him.

But who are his employers, you ask? The CIA, no less! See, Bourne is an assassin trained by the CIA's project Treadstone, led by a man named Conklin. Bourne's last mission went awry, and now Conklin wants to get Bourne and clean up the mess. This is because Bourne's intended target, an African warlord called Wombosi, is making his move to spill the beans on the CIA's attempts on his life.

However, Bourne has trouble piecing his past together by himself. He runs into Marie, a German girl who needs money, and asks for her help to get to Paris, where he believes he will find some answers. Marie agrees, and unwittingly gets dragged into the fray as Conklin's men and other 'products' of Treadstone close in on Bourne.

After watching this, I can conclude that this is not the typical action thriller. It's a thinking man's action thriller. At the end of it, you won't have all the answers you seek. But it's a spy thriller of sorts, where nothing is what it seems, so the open ended questions will pave the way for the sequels. Better yet, it's a film where characterisation was done well. Director Doug Liman gives us an insight into Bourne's character, as a man who is trained to kill, yet has no idea how or why he knows how to do all that. Liman also gives us some great action sequences, like the car chase between Bourne and the police through Paris, and some neat hand-to-hand fights.

Performance wise, Matt Damon is perfect as the assassin riddled with amnesia. In this film, Damon looks like a wide-eyed boy with no idea about what's going on, then in some scenes he just jumps straight into action and becomes deadly, giving Bourne a sense of unpredictability that fits his profile. If you met Bourne on the street, you would have no clue on how dangerous he actually is, which is cool. Franka Potente lends able support as Marie, and plays off the emotionally vulnerable Bourne splendidly.

And now, I'm all set for The Bourne Ultimatum, which promises to be better than its two predecessors. Bring it on. (4/5)