The Name's Bourne. Jason Bourne. 'The Bourne Identity'

A lot of people were disappointed by Doug Liman’s ‘The Bourne Identity’ simply because it was Doug Liman’s. The movie did not have an especially Doug Liman feel, and generally, people were looking for something more, apparently, Doug Limanesque. (Of course, people didn't like it for other reasons as well) I, on the other hand, love it. Doug Liman, director of ‘Swingers’ and ‘Go’, may not have made something that screamed out ‘Doug Liman Film Here!’, but he wasn’t supposed to. He was supposed to make ‘The Bourne Identity’ into the best movie he could, and he certainly did.


While ‘The Bourne Identity’ strays wildly from its source material (the book by Robert Ludlum), it does so in a way that nevertheless seemed true to the spirit of the book. The book is an altogether different sort of idea than just an action, spy adventure story. To stay true to the book, there is far more to our hero than could be dealt with in a realistic time for a film. Be that as it may, it seemed true to the spirit of the book to me, because we follow Bourne down a sufficiently similar, just softer, road.


The movie opens with a fishing vessel plucking a man out of the ocean. It turns out he’s been shot twice, and has a curious metal tube implanted in his leg. When he wakes up, he doesn’t remember anything about himself, but the metal tube reveals a Swiss bank account number. Once at the bank, our man finds a stack of passports, piles of cash, a gun, and various other odd items. Picking one of the passports, seemingly at random, he latches onto the name Jason Bourne.

Even before Bourne sees the mysterious contents of the safe box, he’s on edge and on full alert. He may not know who he is, but he knows getting shot and having an inexplicable doodad in your leg is highly suspect. When the authorities want to arrest him at the U.S. embassy, he knows he’s on the run, and had better stay that way.

After escaping pursuit, he meets up with a fairly random woman, Marie (Franka Potente - ‘Run Lola Run’, ‘Blow’, ‘Storytelling’) that he noticed having her own difficulties with the embassy, and offers her $20,000 if she’ll give him a ride. The two soon team up, and after Bourne reveals that he doesn’t know who he is, and they’re attacked by an apparent assassin, the adventure begins.

All the while, we shoot back and forth to catch shots of turmoil at Secret Spy Headquarters in the U.S. We learn that Bourne is an assassin himself, and he was sent to exterminate an African leader who has been removed from power, but is nevertheless a serious thorn in the Agency’s side. Head Spy Conklin (Chris Cooper - ‘American Beauty’, ‘The Patriot’) only knows that the mission failed and Bourne hasn’t turned up. Well, he also knows that Bourne isn’t dead, and doesn’t like that at all. Before long, Conklin is ‘turning on’ all the agents the Agency has in Europe. Mission...Kill Bourne.


From here, Bourne and companion move from point to point, lead to lead, to try and put together his identity, while avoiding police and hitmen at every turn. Bourne learns more about himself, in stages, and ultimately discovers the truth. Connections to information change, and change, and change again, until we finally have the entire truth (even though we sort of had it all along). And, naturally, the relationship between Bourne and Marie expands and goes through some sudden shifts as Bourne remembers. The relationship between Bourne and Bourne changes no small amount as well.


Matt Damon would make a terrible Bond, but he makes an excellent Jason Bourne, and so in another way, he would make a pretty good James Bond. If, that is, we were looking for a James Bond from the books, and not the semi-farcical thing Bond has become in the more recent movies. We get a Bourne here that is just as Bourne should be. He doesn’t have his identity, but he still knows several languages, martial arts, and a variety of other things that help make up Jason Bourne. He may not be sure of his name, but he knows when a situation looks like its going to go wrong. We get to see him, in some very well put together scenes, almost as if his ‘Spidey sense’ is going off, knowing that something has triggered his ‘alarm’, but not being quite in tune enough with himself (and all the facts of his situation) to know quite why.

Adding to the beauty of the movie are several key notes of realism within the fairly unreal necessities. Fight scenes, for example, apparently choreographed not by someone famous for choreographing the fight scenes in a lot of movies, but rather by someone who knows how to kill people. Fight scenes where, frankly, you can hardly tell what’s going on, well, because that’s how fights are. The obligatory chase scene has little to do with flashy cars, and much more to do with knowing how to drive. And, a glorious, and wonderfully noticeable, minimum of dialogue. No witty banter for the mere sake of witty banter here. No having the characters ramble on for no good reason just because if no one talks the audience gets uncomfortable. Whole minutes pass without anyone saying anything. It’s beautiful.

What’s best about the movie, if we must pick one thing to be best (and it stands out, so we may as well), is the way in which we can see Bourne switch on and off. This is, to some degree or other (perhaps more in the book), a part of the point of the movie. When Bourne is ‘off’ (or only semi-on, or whatever), he ponders his identity. He wonders why he notices such strange things and catalogs such information. He wonders at his abilities. He struggles with his situation, interacts with Marie, and thinks about life. When he’s on, people die. Of course, it’s not so simple as seeing him start to kill people. He changes, and he changes so that you could notice even if he didn’t kill people. When he’s ‘on’, he’s the man that his experiences have made him. When he’s ‘off’ he is unmasked. Unhindered by his ‘identity’, he is a ‘self’ more pure. More himself. As Bourne tells us when he learns a bit too much, ‘I don’t want to know who I am anymore. I don’t want to know the things I know about myself already.’ Of course not. Who’d want to be that bastard? No one, you see. Not even the people who are that bastard.

It’s the same general theme of many amnesia stories of course. You can see the same idea at play in ‘The Majestic’, though in the end that movie plays itself out slightly ‘wrong’ in my view.


Though the movie has to soften the way we go with this theme (in the book he’s a bastard the likes of which would put this one to shame) in order to deliver an action-packed film, it doesn’t neglect it. It’s there, you just have to get it more through the performance by Damon and by many of the directorial choices.

But, it’s an odd film in many ways. It’s not really an action movie so much as it is simply a chase movie. There’s only the one explosion, and if that doesn’t throw you right there, there’s also an actual point to the explosion. Very few cars crash, and very few bullets are actually fired. This is not the sort of thing that action audiences are looking for, and so ‘The Bourne Identity’ didn’t exactly massacre the box office. Worse still (for those trying to wrest dollars from fickle movie-goers), though teen movie hotshot Julia Stiles (㢮 Things I Hate About You’, ‘O’) is in it, friends soon told friends that hers is a role that is the next best thing to completely unnecessary. Possibly also keeping people away, the ‘girl’ in the movie is certainly no ‘Bond girl’. Instead, she’s a woman who can actually act quite well, carries her role, delivers relevant emotion to her scenes, and is not exactly ‘bombshell’ material.



‘The Bourne Identity’ is easily the best action movie (especially with a spy angle) in years, and is the best movie aiming at ‘Summer Blockbuster’ perhaps ever. It has a meaningful, surprisingly well-acted main character, an excellent actress able to hold our sympathy, and purposeful action that isn’t overdone just for the sake of overdoing it.


Some may say that Doug Liman hasn’t lived up to himself. I say he has surpassed himself.