The film is old-fashioned in the sense that it is an old-school spy thriller, in this case based on the best-selling 1980 novel by the late spy novelist Robert Ludlum. At the same time, though, it boasts up-to-date hipness both in front of and behind the camera. Where someone as dull as Richard Chamberlain played the story’s hero in the 1988 television mini-series of the same name, the film introduced versatile pin-up Matt Damon in his bid to be taken seriously as an action hero, which turned out to be a compelling choice. Behind the camera we get director Doug Liman, the aspiring auteur who directed the cultish comedy Swingers (1996) and the Tarantinoesque/Altmanesque (pick your director-derived adjective) multi-narrative romp Go (1999). Neither was a resounding hit (although both have intense followings), which made it all the more surprising that Universal entrusted him with what ultimately turned out to be a lucrative franchise.

Damon plays the movie’s namesake, Jason Bourne, who appeared in a trilogy of Ludlum’s novels. Here he is introduced as a man found floating in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea one night with two bullets in his back and no memory. Simultaneously desperate to discover who he is and terrified to know, he goes about searching out his identity, first at a Swiss bank where he finds a safety deposit box filled with passports, cash from dozens of countries, and a gun. Some things he doesn’t have to try to remember, such as his amazing ability to beat the bejesus out of anyone who threatens him. He freaks himself out by being automatically wary--memorizing license plate numbers, scoping out exits, and sizing up everyone in a room as if by instinct.

But, Bourne has bigger problems than trying to figure out who he is. Apparently, certain members of the CIA want him dead, particularly Ted Conklin (Chris Cooper), who at one point activates every agent in all of Europe to track Bourne down. In escaping one of many frying pans, Bourne hooks up with a young wanderer named Marie (Run Lola Run’s Franka Potente), who agrees to drive him to Paris. After that, she’s in as deeply as he is.

The story tears across the European map from one action set-piece to another: a fight at the American embassy in Zurich, another fight in Bourne’s apartment in Paris that is followed by a rip-roaring car chase through the narrow Parisian boulevards, and then a game of cat-and-mouse between two assassins in the French countryside. Liman proved to be a surprisingly good action director (which has since become his genre of choice), making even the most routine spectacle seem a little more interesting than it probably should be.

There is one particularly vertiginous scene that finds Bourne dangling from the outer walls of the American embassy, and Liman films it with head-spinning extreme high and low angles and almost no sound. Later, he drops all restraint and gives us a patently ludicrous moment in which Bourne drops five stories down a stairwell and uses a corpse as a landing pad. Uh-huh. Liman also seems particularly intent on making us squirm in our seats at the little excruciating moments that often get glossed over in slick action vehicles, as he shows in gruesome detail the bullets being extracted from Bourne’s back and a throwaway moment in the middle of a fight when a baddie takes a moment to pull a ballpoint pen from the flesh on top of his hand where Bourne had just jabbed it.

As far as the performances go, Damon is an effective anti-Stallone; he brings the fierce intelligence (and sometimes the anger) from Good Will Hunting (1997) and laces it with the cunning of The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), but without the moral and emotional uncertainty. There is a fundamental frustration that drives his character, as you get the sense that deep inside he is a man who is used to being in constant control, and now has no idea what is going on. Although he’s not physically imposing, Damon comes across quite credibly as the kind of guy who could get out of the sticky situations in which screenwriters Tony Gilroy and William Blake Herron are constantly putting him. Franka Potente, in her first significant English-language role (she had a bit part in Ted Demme's Blow), brings a charm and sensuality to her character, and if there are any jokes in the movie, she gets to utter them (when she and Borne ring the doorbell at his Paris apartment and there is no answer, she quips, “I guess you’re not home”). She and Damon develop a solid chemistry, so that even the obligatory re-coupling at the end works despite itself.

There are moments when you can feel Liman trying a little too hard, particularly with his constantly roving camera. The insistent movement gives the movie a much-needed sense of urgency, but sometimes it whip-pans around a crowded CIA office a little too much. At the same time, though, there are moments when he shows great composure and restraint, as in the aforementioned scene that finds Bourne slowly climbing his way down the side of the U.S. embassy. Liman gets good performances from his actors, though, and he works his way through the convoluted plot so that we’re only slightly confused at the end, which in movies of this sort is some kind of accomplishment in and of itself.

Copyright ©2010 James Kendrick

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