The Bourne Identity (2002)

Directed by Doug Liman
Written by Tony Gilroy & William Blake Herron, based on the novel by Robert Ludlum
Starring Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, Clive Owen

My Advice: Matinee.

Off the coast of France, a fishing boat pulls in a catch they weren't expecting: Matt Damon. No, sorry, it's really some unconscious guy in a special ops wetsuit with two bullets in his back. And when the unconscious guy wakes up, he has no freaking clue who he is. But he does know what he can do. He can speak in various languages--fluently. He's fast as a cheetah on espresso and three times as deadly. So with his only clue being a strange little device that was pulled out of his hip (!), he sets off across Europe to try and fill in the blanks.

First of all, let me say that my main concern upon hearing of this project was: will I believe that Matt Damon could kill me with a business card at fifty yards? Fortunately the answer is a resounding yes. Damon is pumped out the arse for this role and the subsequent fight sequences are brutal and quite interesting. My only problem with the film and what cost it a half a cup--although it's a problem with fight sequences in Hollywood in general--is that the fight sequences are filmed so close in that it's hard to tell what in the hell is happening at any given moment. I understand that when you've got fights that look like ass and you need to distract, but from what one can see of the fights in this flick, you're begging for a wide angle. But alas. At least it has the most original method of traversing a staircase I've seen in some time.

The rest of the parts are filled very capably, but I must admit that it's easy to do considering that the entire focus of the movie is Damon. Potente sets up a character that believably would try and help out a potential psycho like this mysterious Damon guy, so that was a hurdle crossed. Cooper and Cox are such great character actors that CIA head burrito roles are no problem for them, done and done well. Clive Owen, who appears to be increasingly creeping up on everybody's radar, fills out the role of assassin machine well. Julia Stiles had such a small role it was almost distracting, seeing as how I kept expecting her to "do something". But that was just me, I think.

The film as whole is nice and taut. There are a few bits that almost seemed to lag, but that made sense in the full context of the hour and fifty minutes once things started to take off. Because at that point, lag went from being lag to "space in which tension builds." And there's quite a bit of it, along with just enough humor to keep the whole thing from being too stodgy. So many thanks to Liman and company for delivering a flick that is what it is: an action/thriller movie that, like a good spy, delivers the goods and then gets out.