Opinion

The Bourne Identity

Dir: Doug Liman
Starring: Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Chris Cooper, Brian Cox

"He was the perfect weapon until he became the target."

A man with no memory is found drifting in the Mediterranean by an Italian fishing crew. He has been shot, and a tiny device which projects details of a Swiss bank account has been embedded under his skin. On land, he makes his way to Switzerland in hopes of establishing his identity, but along the way discovers that he is being targeted by an unknown and powerful enemy. And without consciously thinking about it, he can call upon lethal fighting skills and almost uncanny tactical abilities. Searching for the truth, he and his inadvertant travelling companion Marie are thrown into a series of violent situations.

With The Bourne Identity, the ongoing efforts of Good Will Hunters Matt Damon and Ben Affleck to demonstrate their depth and range continue to find parallels. It's only weeks since Affleck's turn as action man in the generally-derided The Sum Of All Fears, and now Damon takes on a similar role. Of the two, it seems that Damon is making the better choices, as Jason Bourne is a challenging character, as well as an action hero. Amnesia is a far-too-common plot device in fiction, and finding new ways to make it interesting is quite a challenge. Usefully, there are a range of incidental discoveries to be made along the way that he is able to react to, and they at least give him a series of hooks.

Based on a novel by Robert Ludlum, the film takes a few liberties with its source - to begin with the literary Jason Bourne is rather older, but at least until Indiana Jones 4, there probably isn't that much of a market for action heroes in their late fifties or early sixties. Likewise, car chases play better visually than on paper, and the car chase through central Paris is a stormer, playing off the fact established in The Italian Job that there's no finer car for dodging through inner city traffic than a Mini. As was remarked during the chase when i saw it; "It's a Mini Adventure."

Structurally, the film works very well, offering hints about Bourne's real role and the circumstances around his amnesia at about the right rate, and developing the characters of Bourne and Maria just enough without getting bogged down in unnecessary background. There is, effectively, no other character development in the film, which demonstrates a good grasp of the cruicial need for pace in a film with as slight a plot as this one. Doug Liman's two previous films, Go and Swingers offered no suggestion that he had the ability to shift so easily into espionage/action film mode, but based on this showing, don't be surprised if this isn't his last such.

The performances, as noted, are solid but not showy, and both of the leads make a good showing of the kind of panic and paranoia that would surely have to characterise a situation like this. There's a moment where Marie realises that the photos by which an assassin is identifying her come from the security system in the American embassy; "Who can do that? Who has the power?"; when she retreats almost into catatonia, and I for one would probably be right there with her.

There are a few problems; Chris Cooper, as the senior operative responsible for tracking Bourne down comes off as more irritated bureaucrat than actually scary spook, there's a mini-twist towards the end that is obvious from miles away, and what looks like it might have been a plot thread about how the assassins shown in the film are conditioned or controlled is touched upon a few times but never resolved.

But Cooper's performance apart, these are flaws that really only hit after the film is over - for its running time it carries the audience along with a great deal of energy and not enough time to pause and get nit-picky. It's a summer acion movie that's arrived here slightly out of season, but if a couple of hours of fairly mindless diversion are what you're looking for, it beats most of the late summer offerings pretty comprehensively. Plus it's very, very loud. And it's got a Mini-led car chase for heaven's sake. What more do you want?