Posted: 06/20/2002

The Bourne Identity

(2002)

by Hank Yuloff

Right at the top I have to say that this review does not count the last 2 minutes of the movie. If I were to count those last 120 seconds or so, I would absolutely slam this movie. What a bunch of stupid tripe for a final scene. They were totally unnecessary and director Doug Liman (Go, Swingers) should be ashamed for including it at the end of what was, until those last two minutes, an otherwise good movie.

That being said, except for some inconsistent plot holes, I enjoyed The Bourne Identity though I should tell you that the buzz around our little e-zine seems to be pretty mixed. Mostly it has to do with Tony Gilroy’s translation of the Robert Ludlum book. I did not read the book, so I’m reviewing Bourne as it stands alone. Knowing that Gilroy’s last 3 movies were Bait, Proof of Life, and Armageddon, I can see that it isn’t unusual for him to have some story holes, while still putting together a decent script (I liked 2 of these 3 films). Bourne follows the pattern.

Matt Damon (Oceans 11, Jay & Silent Bob, All the Pretty Horses) stars as Jason Bourne, a CIA operative who has lost his memory while on a secret mission. We first see him floating in the Mediterranean Sea where he is dragged out by a small fishing boat in the middle of the night (what are the odds). That backwater boat has a guy aboard that can pull bullets and a secret metal pellet out of Bourne’s back without killing him (again, what are the odds) and who is willing to give him enough money to get him to a bank in Switzerland that has a safe deposit box waiting for him. We know about the bank because the aforementioned pellet flashes the name of the bank and the account number.

Damon spends the entire movie trying to avoid being shot while trying to figure out who he is and what kind of guy has 6 passports, hundreds of thousands of dollars split between 10 countries, and a gun in one of those super-secure safe-deposit boxes. “Let’s see…I’m either a terrorist, a government operative for some country, or a multi-linguistic tourist who always wants to be prepared.”

In the search for his identity, he stops first at the American Embassy (a good guess or does he KNOW he’s a US Citizen?) and ends up hooked up with Franka Potente. I had just seen one of Potente’s last movies, Run Lola Run, and she looks very much like the Brenda Chenowith character in HBO’s Six Feet Under. Except without the kinky hang-ups. Potente does good job as Bourne’s travel mate, but it seems her real job is to give Bourne a reason to talk out loud so we find out that he is thinking like an assassin but has no idea why.

To this point, it sure must seem like I didn’t like the movie, but that is not the case. It is exciting, moves along at a good clip, has tidbits of humor and a satisfactory ending to the story (except for the aforementioned last two minutes).

Chris Cooper (The Patriot, the neighbor dad in American Beauty) plays the CIA operations officer who is trying to make sure that Bourne’s failure on the mission that had him end up in the water, does not become public knowledge. The one problem with the character is that every time I saw him on screen, I felt I was watching some movie from the 70’s. Must have been the lighting or his wardrobe. Brian Cox (Manhunter, L.I.E.) shows up as a political member of The Agency, and Clive Owen (Croupier, Gosford Park) plays another operative sent in to lob bullets at Damon.

Some excellent driving sequences, excellent fight scenes, and really good sound make me give The Bourne Identity a better than average recommendation, but if you are torn between this and another CIA-type flick currently in theaters, The Sum of All Fears, starring Damon’s buddy Ben Affleck, I would go for the Tom Clancy flick.

Hank Yuloff is an advertising specialty guy in Los Angeles who, if he could speak 5 languages and get into as good a shape as Damon, would have tried to be a CIA operative in the movie industry.

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