The Bourne Identity Review

The Bourne films are one of my favorite movie series, just below the Nolan Batman films and the Star Wars original trilogy. I love spy thrillers with their cloak and dagger machinations and their cat and mouse games, they're so riveting.

The Bourne Identity is a spy fugitive thriller with a compelling mystery. I vastly prefer Bourne to Bond, due to the the corrupt right wing shadow agency he once served hunting him and the amnesiac fugitive angle. Bourne is a flawed hero, who has no idea of his past before being pulled wounded from the sea by fishermen. He must backtrack along a trail of clues using keen detective skills to piece together who he was and who is hunting him. He is assisted by a gypsy girl called Marie, and the two fall in love. She is drawn to him for his air of vulnerability beneath his stoic facade, and she wants to help him find the answers to who he was.

He learns that he was formerly an assassin for a top secret black ops U.S. government agency, and a cadre of highly trained assassins are sent to ambush him. In the end he confronts his former commander, and during their dramatic confrontation he recalls the moment where he failed the mission that began the film. He was about to assassinate a former african dictator when his children caused Bourne to have a change of heart, and he was shot in the back and passed out floating on the ocean.

Damon gives an understated performance as Bourne, showing smoldering intensity and simmering rage ready to erupt forth, and profound regret and dismay for his former life as an assassin. He doesn't play him as a one dimensional killing machine but shows sensitivity and pathos.

The mystery aspects of the story are masterfully woven into the narrative and elevate the film over standard fugitive or spy stories. Bourne has the skill, guile and sixth sense of a ninja, his keen hunters instincts serving him well when he becomes the prey. The story is very grounded and un-glamorous compared with the showy sensationalism of the Bond films, but the story is fundamentally more powerful and thematically unified with the mystery, fugitive, amnesia and shadow agency conspiracy aspects woven together deftly. The hand to hand action is outstanding, with Bourne showing preternatural skill and quicksilver speed with his combination strikes. The music is a masterwork fusion of orchestral elements and electronica, ranging in tenor from melancholy and reflective to tense, rhythmic, pulsating and energizing.

Overall it is a highly unique, complex and compelling film with a great cast. The action is minimalistic but intense and exciting.

9/10