The best spy/action flick I've seen in years.

Rating: 9/10 (18 June 2002)

First, it helps that Matt Damon is one of my favorite actors. (He's been somewhere near my top five since I first saw him in Dogma, and after that, I discovered that he's a much better actor than that movie allowed him to show.) He's easy to like in any role, and I haven't seen a movie yet that he's been in that I haven't liked. Add to that some great performances by Chris Cooper and Julia Stiles (whose role was not nearly significant enough, but enough to lure me into the theatre), and I think I've found potentially my favorite realistic action movie of the year, assuming nothing better comes along.
But to the movie: The Bourne Identity. I had no idea that it existed until a couple of weeks ago, I had no idea that I would like it until a couple days ago, and I had no idea that I would see it today until a couple of hours ago. But I did, and I liked it, and now I'm almost disappointed that I have disliked shelving Robert Ludlum's books for the past few months. The Bourne Identity is a great story, one worth seeing several times over, and a great movie. Having said that, I may just have to read the book.
In my opinion, The Bourne Identity is one of the best movies of the year, and is easily one of my new favorites. Assuming that that doesn't change, there is a particularly good chance that the DVD will land on my shelf when it is released. In my opinion, it's a great movie -- one of the best films of its genre that I've seen in quite a while.