A good state to the classic meat & butter espionage thriller

Rating: 9/10 (6 June 2020)

The crew of a fishing vessel find a body floating in the middle of the ocean. They bring it on board and the improvised 'doctor' finds two bullets on the back and a Swiss bank account implanted in the hip of the body. The 'body' indeed is not dead but unconscious: he is Jason Bourne (Matt Dammon), a CIA secret and very well prepared agent with amnesia. During the period of fishing in the sea, he recovers his health. Once on shore, he decides to go to the Swiss bank and then to the American Consulate. There he meets Marie Helena Kreutz (Franka Potente, from 'Run Lola Run' and 'Anatomy') and they two together will pass to the most spectacular actions along the film. The great Matt Dammon and Franka Potente are perfect.
I Bourne is trained. Is he ever. He speaks several languages, is a formidable martial artist, has highly trained powers of observation and memory, knows all the spy tricks and is a formidable driver. We see that during a sensational chase scene through the streets of Paris, much of it through narrow alleys, down flights of steps, and against traffic
While "Bourne" does not have a particularly deep plot, it is consistent and focused. The focus is entirely upon Bourne and how he is to deal with having no memory of his past, being hunted without knowing why. Some people have complained about being confused by the movie. I for one, do not need to have everything spelled out since in many cases this smacks of unreality in the first place; the essence of espionage is drawing conclusions from very sketchy information.
Douglas Liman, the film's executive producer, directs it. He directs the traffic well, gets a nice wintry look from his locations, absorbs us with the movie's spy craft and uses Damon's ability to be focused and sincere. His direction seems to slow down the piously choreographed chase scenes & martial fights to focus on heavy exposition between Damon & Potente's characters as they unveil they myriad of mysteries regarding Bourne's fishing out of Mediterranean waters & his very identity; before expert action film director Paul Green Grass took over in the second film & speed the film up with his shaky hand held camera & fast editing & mixing style. Liman does not playing out the film as a stage play in which we are acquainted with the characters' mystery & conspiracy strung ids & limited superegos.
The fights are just impressive, which, as other reviewers have pointed out, are among the most believable martial arts based fight scenes ever seen. No big grand gestures or Olympian kicks just fast, nasty moves designed to inflict maximum damage with minimum effort.
This movie is better than the sequels in the Bourne series due to the romantic interest between Jason and Marie and the humanity expressed in the script versus the action in the sequels. The script has some special lines, such as Jason's "Just keep on talking, it's relaxing," and "How do I know that?" and Marie's "I said I was your personal assistant, I just asked for it" and "Nobody does the right thing," and the dying agent's line "We always work alone." The story raises issues about organizations which tend to eliminate their own members. In the end, truth and justice win out on an individual level, if not a societal level which, it seems, was the author's message.
Nonetheless, a great opener to a trilogy that Green Grass would enhance by letting the script dissolve in the film with the pace & mood of a classic, nearly Hitchcock, espionage thriller. The entire story is a set up for the martial arts and chases. Because they are done well, because the movie is well crafted and acted, we give it a pass. The Bourne Identity is excellently paced and brings a great deal of realism to the spy genre. The fight sequences are fast and believable, the car chases are accurately choreographed and the character of Jason Bourne is vulnerable and easy to identify with.