By Courtney L. Woods
Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) can defend himself with an ordinary, everyday plastic ink pen. How does he know how to do this, you ask? Well, whatever you do, don’t ask him, because he doesn’t know- he has amnesia.
As the film opens, a fishing boat rescues Bourne after he has been shot twice. He can’t remember anything about himself, but he soon discovers that he knows how to engage in serious hand-to-hand combat and how to speak around twenty different languages. With these mysterious qualities, he figures that something is amiss.
On the path to self-discovery, Bourne pays a woman named Marie (Franka Potente, most memorable in the stylish and ultra-cool “Run Lola Run”) twenty thousand dollars to take him to Paris. Meanwhile, the men he worked for at the U.S. government before his accident are hunting Bourne down, thinking he has turned against them after a botched mission.
“The Bourne Identity” is the summer’s first really good movie. Up until this point, everything has been passable; even “Spider-Man” and “Star Wars: Episode II,” while not bad films, were filled with often-times cartoonish digital effects and bad acting (for instance, Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane Watson in the former and Natalie Portman as Padme Amidala in the latter. Sock puppets or wet mops would have been more emotive).
After a long dry spell since “Good Will Hunting” (lest we forget “All the Pretty Horses” and “The Legend of Bagger Vance”), Matt Damon seems to be back on track with films like “The Bourne Identity” and last winter’s “Ocean’s Eleven.” While not losing his artsy edge, the talented Mr. Damon has successfully become a smart, ass-kicking action hero, blending depth with some really incredible fight sequences (like the aforementioned ink pen).
This film is not the normal, flaccid spy tale; and while Damon is quite good-looking, his Jason Bourne is not quite the “Mr. Lover-Lover” for which James Bond is notorious. The film gains even more art-house ambience with the help of Potente and the director, Doug Liman, who is best known for his cult-hit film “Swingers” and “Go.” Liman has layered his latest undertaking with care; sometimes with so many layers, the audience gets lost in the fray. There are many layers in “The Bourne Identity,” filled with back-story and twists, but none of them confusing enough to lose the audience.
The only real downside to this film is the appearance of Julia Stiles (“Save the Last Dance”). Up until the final scenes of the film, she has no dialogue or face-to-face contact with the other cast members. She merely sits in a room in Paris, tracking down calls and cleaning up other people’s messes. Why is she even there? She seems like a waste of film for such a small part.
Finally, there is the now famous question. Who would win in a fight between Damon’s Jason Bourne and his best friend Ben Affleck’s Jack Ryan (“The Sum of All Fears”)? Definitely Bourne, with his impressive fighting skills and intense training as an invisible assassin; however, he would have run into more trouble if Jack Ryan was still being played by Harrison Ford (“Patriot Games” and “Clear and Present Danger”).
CARDINAL GRADE: A-
