A screenplay by any other name...is NOT The Bourne Identity.

Rating: 1/10 (19 June 2002)

Well, six months of waiting for what I believed to be a very promising launchpad-of-a-novel has exploded in a very distraught engineer's face. Robert Ludlum's characters, storyline - even the premise - are nowhere to be found in Doug Liman's big screen adaptation. All I can surmise is that the screenwriter, Tony Gilroy, wrote a movie completely unrelated to Ludlum's masterpiece, then changed the names and faces of those involved to besmirch the innocent.
Gone is David Webb from Bourne's pysche, and all the delicious inner turmoil. Cain is relegated to a mere name on a passport. Gone is the brilliant and wonderful Canadian economist Marie *St. Jacques*. Gone is the dynamic and repentant psychiatrist Mo Panov. And most notably, gone is the master assassin himself - the inimitable Carlos the Jackal.

So what's left? A mediocre action flick about a bad guy with no memory and no direction. A screenplay so ambiguous and bland that it could easily be mistaken for a wayward James Bond movie. Lite. James Bond Lite. Only one calorie.
I am ashamed for you Mr. Liman, Mr. Gilroy. And I fear for the day that I will need to squeeze my eyes shut to avoid any glimpse of the sequel.
JW