Conspiracy Theory

Rating: 7/10 (17 September 2007)

OK, no doubt that The Bourne trilogy is movies at its best, or better: action movies at its best. But what strikes me is that 10 years earlier, the exact same story was told by Richard Donner in Conspiracy Theory.
Follow me: a secret CIA project that trains special agents by means of psychological methods to kill enemies of the state, one agent that doesn't remember how he got there and tries to find out who he is, and finally gets to the people that made him like that, ... Actually when we were watching the Bourne Ultimatum last week, we were quite amused by predicting the plot and guessing how certain scenes from Conspiracy Theory were almost copied into Bourne Ultimatum...
OK, Bourne ULtimatum comes with more special effects in line with nowadays cinema, has more depth because it has the opportunity to tell the story over 3 movies, and certainly is superior in directing, editing and camera work. On the contrary the interpretation of the character of Jerry Fletcher by Mel Gibson, is at least equal as strong to Matt Damon's Jason Bourne, maybe even slightly superior towards the end.
Maybe others have noticed the same, and maybe there is a logical explanation behind the resemblance, I'm glad to find out because so far I couldn't find any articles about it.
Bottomline is that both are excellent movies and talk about how far a government can go in the interests of national security.