The Bourne Identity

The Bourne Identity is an effective thriller that grabs your interest right from the start, when a man is hauled out of the sea by the crew of an Italian fishing boat. He is more dead than alive, but even though he has been shot into the bargain, he survives.

The man is suffering from amnesia to such a degree that he has no idea who he is. The only thing he has to go on is the number of a Swiss bank account, found implanted under his skin. So he heads for Switzerland, where he discovers that he is supposedly Jason Bourne and lives in Paris, but the rest of the contents of the safe-deposit box suggest that Jason Bourne's problems have not gone away. Soon he has both police and agents on his heels, and their intentions are anything but peaceful. Jason pays a young German woman, Marie, to drive him from Switzerland to Paris, but the pursuers are not so easily shaken off.

A similar premise can be found in Renny Harlin's "The Long Kiss Goodnight" with Geena Davis as the agent who is unaware of her own identity. So is the man without a name, and just as in "The Long Kiss Goodnight" there is both quiet humour and suspense to be had in the scenes where he slowly discovers that his abilities are evidently not quite ordinary.

The story is impossible to make complete sense of, but that is probably not the intention either. The central point is that Jason Bourne must be eliminated at all costs, for he is living proof of both a failed operation and a botched medical experiment carried out by the CIA with some of their best agents as guinea pigs. Now Bourne's colleagues have been given the task of killing one of their own.

Matt Damon is a likeable and human hero, and Franka Potente, who made her breakthrough in "Run Lola Run", is convincing as a modern Central European woman.