Identity

Rating: 7/10 (9 February 2011)

One trilogy I had been dying to see is the Bourne trilogy, so many people just love these movies and I've heard nothing but positive reviews about them. Most people I talk too told me that it's a new James Bond movie. So I borrowed the movies from my boyfriend and watched them this week. Starting off with The Bourne Identity and what a way to start. While I didn't find the film as exciting as I would expect it, it is a very well done action movie. The choreography was awesome and Matt Damon makes for a very strong male lead. His character is the only thing that kept me going through the movie, we start off not knowing who he really is and want to find out with him what happened to him, who he is and why he's wanted dead or alive, though preferably dead. As he goes through heck to find out what is going on and only having one person on his side, a woman who is probably only with him just because he's hot, he finds out that he's almost like the Superman assassin. James Bond would probably say "Well, at least I still have my sexy weapons and lines of hot women waiting to jump my bones".
A fishing boat crew finds an unconscious man adrift in the Mediterranean with two gunshot wounds in his back. When he wakes up, the man comes to realize he suffers from amnesia, having only one clue to his identity: the account number to a safe deposit box provided by a tiny laser projector. Traveling to Switzerland to find the corresponding bank, the man discovers he is skilled in advanced hand-to-hand combat when he instinctively defends himself from two policemen. He arrives at the bank and finds the deposit box contains a significant amount of cash and several passports with his photo, but with numerous aliases. He assumes the name Jason Bourne. A few blocks away, he induces Marie with $20,000 to take him to Paris to the address on his "Bourne" passport. Meanwhile, back at CIA headquarters the head of Treadstone, reveals to his supervisor, that Bourne was the covert operative responsible for a failed assassination attempt. Intending to sever all connections between the CIA and Wombosi, Conklin sends three highly-trained assassins to kill Bourne.
The only thing these movies fall victim too is the shaky cam effect, I understand it's meant to make the audience feel tense but it's not needed for 90% of the movie. Also I wished they had picked a different actress to play Marie. Nothing wrong with Franka Potente, she's a fine actress but she just didn't really capture me as Marie and made her character into such a cliché. Plus their love story isn't really that necessary and very random. However like I said this is a very interesting story and I'm glad that I decided to check these movies out. I really loved the car chase scene, it's rare we get a good one any more and it was handled so gracefully that made it so exciting. I'm so curious if Matt Damon did his own stunts which is probably unlikely however those fight scenes were just awesome and again done with such style that it made the film worth watching. The supporting cast holds up very well with Chris Cooper and Julia Styles, I'm sad that Chris Cooper didn't make it for the other movies because his character is so dark and a great villain, but the show must go on and other great villains will be introduced as we find out more about Jason Bourne.
7/10