Unsatisfying

Rating: Null/10 (5 September 2002)

Close but no cigar?? This movie could have been great. Instead it assumes the audience of today will not sit for over two hours and are less interested in character interaction and romance than in things blowing up and people getting killed in spectacular ways.
Certainly the film is slick, beautifully shot and edited. The thrills are there as is the violence. But there is no heart to this film. The book excelled in portraying the humanity of the lead character and it carefully developed the romance and the relationship between Marie and Bourne and made that relationship critical to the ultimate success of the hero. What do we get in the movie? A hurried one-night stand, which, although believable in its inevitability, is unconvincing as a harbinger of a deeper emotional link between the couple. The elements are there but they do not come together largely because of ill advised plot changes: she is a street wise loner as opposed to an intelligent academic to whom the world of Jason Bourne is in utter contrast to the Mcgill University depicted in the book. There is an intellectual as well as a physical connection in the book (and the TV movie incidentally). So jettisoning the old fashioned elements of the plot was in my opinion a mistake.
Franka Potente has been quoted as saying that she found the character of Marie in the book to be unbelievable in today's context and therefore the character was redrawn to be more gritty and street wise. How unfortunate! Movies like Casablanca or The Big Sleep or From Here to Eternity and so on are still beloved by movie fans largely due to these films' old fashioned story and character elements. That today's audience will not accept such themes is an unproven assumption.
I will probably buy the DVD and the film may grow on me with time, but right now I think I'll go and watch Peter Jackson's Frighteners and enjoy how he develops both the thrills and the romance between Michael Fox and Trini Alvarado in perfect balance.