Rating:
Director: Doug Liman
Producers: Patrick Crowley, Richard N. Gladstein, Doug Liman
Writers: Tony Gilroy, William Blake Heron
Director of Photography: Oliver Wood
Cast: Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Chris Cooper, Julia Styles
| THE BOURNE IDENTITY Rating: Director: Doug Liman Producers: Patrick Crowley, Richard N. Gladstein, Doug Liman Writers: Tony Gilroy, William Blake Heron Director of Photography: Oliver Wood Cast: Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Chris Cooper, Julia Styles |
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Review by: Warren
Curry
6/16/02
For the most part, The Bourne Identity is the type of sub par filmmaking that has been casually accepted as the norm in Hollywood. It's a film where the plot serves only as a tool to link one action scene (which get more boring as the film proceeds) to the next. I can't blame stars Matt Damon or Franka Potente (Run Lola Run), because they both do admirable jobs carrying the movie. As much as I would expect to blame director Doug Liman, who seemed ready for a bomb after the barely passable Go, it's not really his fault either. He serviceably carries out the studio's mission, and while he might not go to any great lengths to save the film, he certainly doesn't do anything to ruin it. The problem is simple -- the script is thinner than the most perfectly sliced sashimi (sorry, I just ate Japanese food). In fact, the film barely even seems to have a script -- it feels more like a detailed outline that explains the easiest way to trim the fat and get to the meat of what this film's really about -- Damon kicking ass. Yawn...
Damon plays a CIA agent, who may or may not be named Jason Bourne. As the movie opens, his body is found by a fishing boat in the Mediterranean Sea, with a few bullets in his back and, more importantly, an object that has the number to a Swiss bank account lodged in his hip. When Bourne comes to, he realizes that he can't remember his identity or anything else about his life prior to waking up on the boat. However, he is able to recall how to speak several different languages and how to physically thrash people who threaten him. While in Switzerland, he goes to the bank and checks out the contents of a safe deposit box, which contain several passports that include pictures of him under different aliases, a gun and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cold hard cash.
The going gets tough in Switzerland, but Bourne manages to fight his way out and then enlists the help of a wanderer named Marie (Potente), who he offers $20,000 to drive him to Paris, which is the last known address of Bourne. Concurrently, the CIA, led by a big wig named Ted Conklin (Chris Cooper), learns that their agent is still alive and monitors his activities in Europe. We learn that Bourne (unbeknownst to him, of course) was an assassin assigned to carry out a top secret hit, and now that he's failed, the agency wants him dead. While in Paris, Marie and Bourne fall in love (you must be shocked by this development!) and Maria ends up getting caught in the midst of the several attacks Bourne must thwart. Bourne knew right off the bat that he was in danger, but isn't sure why and has no idea who wants him dead.
Admittedly, there is something very engaging about the "me against the world" character Jason Bourne, and Damon plays him with the right amount of cool, vulnerability and intensity. Potente is equally up to the task, and pulls off the "female companion" role in likeable fashion. As CIA agents tracking the whereabouts of Bourne, Julia Styles and Brian Cox (who is popping up everywhere these days) are given completely flat and one-dimensional roles. Liman's camera is able to convey Bourne's sense of paranoia and the rapid-cut fight scenes in the film's beginning half are exciting and well done.
After the first half hour, the film starts to drag and it, ultimately, clocks in at a much too long 2 hours and 15 minutes. There's just nothing to sustain the movie in terms of character development or even clever plotting. As mentioned before, the action scenes also start to suffer, which includes an interminable car chase and a climactic hyper stylized gun shootout that rivals John Woo at his most preposterous. And, yes, this movie, in typical Hollywood fashion, is completely irresponsible in its portrayal of violence. It mindlessly glorifies mayhem and the "50 coolest ways you can shoot somebody," and doesn't ground its carnal preoccupations in any sort of reality or art. It's the foolish, sterile, manufactured violence of video games and professional wrestling, and in the name of Fuller, Peckinpah, Scorsese and other masters of serious screen violence, I wish this kind of idiocy would hurry and crawl back under its rock.
If an alien landed in my house and asked
me what "a run-of-the-mill Hollywood film" was, I would
definitely point it in the direction of the nearest theater showing
The Bourne Identity.
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