Great Action and not much else

Rating: Null/10 (17 June 2002)

Those kids from Good Will Hunting are really growing up. Now that they have grown up they want to go from the cerebral to the action oriented in one bound. Right now you could go to the theater and find Ben Affleck playing a C.I.A. Analyst in The Sum of All Fears or you could check out the adaptation of Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity with Matt Damon as the lead. I can't speak for the latter but you might want to wait and rent this one.	Matt Damon plays the title role of Jason Borne. Borne has a lot of special talents unfortunately he has to learn about them one at a time because, well, he has lost his memory. It seems that he was pulled out of the ocean with two bullets in him as well as a nice little micro-chip. The men on this ship thought he was dead but much to their surprise he is still alive and after some quick surgery, healing rather rapidly. He doesn't know who he is or how he came to be in the ocean. He does know that he seems to speak multiple languages fluently and that this chip is leading him to an address of a bank in Zurich.	After getting to this bank, the man discovers that he appears to have multiple identities of which Jason Borne seems the most comfortable. He also has quite a bit of cash, some weapons, and after being attacked...a good deal of fighting skills he was unaware of possessing. Borne is forced on the run to discover his identity. Unfortunately the longer he is on the run, the more people with similar skills pop up trying to kill him. It seems that a major governmental agency is not happy having supposedly dead agents reappear without contacting them.	First off I must admit that I have never read the original book so I cannot comment as to how accurate an adaptation this movie is. That being said, I will state this is a very uneven movie. The action sequences are first rate and engrossing. The speed of them can keep you riveted on the edge of your seat. That's the good news.	The bad news is that the rest of the movie moves as a snails pace and doesn't sustain the suspense in the slightest. If anything the middle sequences slow the movie considerably. Also, the movie doesn't seem to go anywhere. The beginning makes some sense for story purposes but the end just happens with no particular climactic moment. One minute the movie is going along and the next...it just stops dead in its tracks. It almost leaves you wanting more with the earnest hope that something else will happen to explain the movie.	Matt Damon does do a good job in the title role. He is very believable as someone who has lost all touch with himself and suddenly finds people all converging with his face in their scope. He is pretty phenomenal in the action sequences and they were quite surprising in their ferocity. This movie is full of action but make no mistake, it is definitely PG-13 oriented as most of it is bloodless.	Most of the rest of the actors have meaningless characters and could have been done by anyone. Character actor Chris Cooper, Lone Star and The Patriot, is wasted as the "villain" and Julia Stiles, Save the Last Dance, is almost non-existent in her role.	Did I hate the movie? Not particularly but I was not totally entertained. It had some great moments but they were few and far between so I give it a grudging **