Review: The Bourne Identity

My journey into action greats takes me to a film I haven’t seen in a long time; The Bourne Identity. The result, good but not as good as I remembered.

The plot is decent enough, it’s a typical ‘Spy gets double-crossed’ story but it adds in an amnesia aspect that it uses really well, allowing the story to be told piece by piece, it does get a little confusing at points but it’s sorted out by the end. Although there was a few parts that seemed a tad unnecessary, Wombosi is only in the film a few minutes and only really becomes essentially at the end. That being said the film did have a good ending when it shows the C.I.A. are willing to do whatever they need to do in order to keep their business secret.

Doug Liman does a good job on directing, he doesn’t overuse ‘Shaky-cam’ (in fact I can’t remember it being used much if at all) and he manages to get the action shot very well with every punch, kick, stab, turn of the wheel and crash feeling heavy and real, the fight scenes while heavily stylised are actually pretty good, Jason’s battle with the Paris assassin makes for a great watch. Props also for the soundtrack and the Techno song used during the excellent car-chase, I can’t remember what it’s called but it a famous one and used to great effect here.

The main breakout star of the film is of course Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, Damon brings a quiet naivety to Bourne, his curiosity as to what happened to him looks genuine but he balances this out with great fighting skills, never once making you doubt his arse-kicking abilities (he then ends it all with a look of confusion as he wonders how he beat these people up). Damon had some good chemistry with Franka Potente’s Marie, their relationship may have went too quickly for my liking but there’s no denying that Jason and Marie are good together, both lost in a world they don’t understand with only each other to rely on. The hair-cutting scene is a great character moment for the two of them.

With these two running the show most of the other players get pushed to the side and almost underused, as mentioned before Wombosi isn’t in the film that long for a seemingly important character, Brian Cox only pops up a couple times to be menacing in the background, Chris Cooper almost seems like the stereotypical deluded villain until the final act and the very underused Clive Owen did make the most of what he was given, his mysterious killer had a something sinister about him that you could only like. I will say this do, it may be a shame for these great actors to be underused but at least they were used and the roles not given to just anyone.

Overall, a rather good action thriller with a great central performance from Damon.

7.5/10