Day Twenty: The Bourne Identity

THE BOURNE IDENTITY

Starring:
-Matt Damon… and other people

Directed by: Doug Liman

Screenplay Credits: Tony Gilroy & William Blake Herron

MPAA Rating: PG-13 – violence and some language


A crew of fishermen is out in a storm when they spot something bobbing around in the ocean. They haul it in and it’s Matt Damon. They think he’s dead, so they start crossing themselves, but then he moves his hand and spooks them. Since he’s still kicking, they take him in to work on him. He’s got two bullets in his back, so they carve them out with X-Acto knives and tweezers. Then they discover a small metal chip in his hip with a big long number and some address in Zurich. Matt comes to and starts flailing around, but the fisherman calms him down and asks his name. Matt doesn’t know.

Back at the CIA offices in Virginia, a nerdy looking dude goes in to see the boss, Conklin, to tell him that the mission has failed.

Still on the boat, Matt learns that he is fluent in several languages, very physical, and capable of tying complicated sailor knots. He’s been there two weeks, but he hasn’t remembered anything about himself or where he came from. The fisherman hands Matt some money as he leaves the boat, as well as the chip that came out of his hip. Matt heads to Zurich and finds his safety deposit box. Inside the box are a handful of passports, a couple of contact cases, thousands of dollars, a mean looking gun, and a few other odds and ends. He cleans out the box, but leaves the gun. Matt is seen by a bank employee, who quickly reports this to the CIA.

Matt ducks into the U.S. Consulate and is spotted. He discovers that he can get out of sticky situations easily and instinctively.

The CIA dispatches all their agents. Conklin wants Bourne in a body bag by sundown. Apparently, Bourne is one of their agents who failed his mission to assassination former dictator Nykwana Wombosi and never reported back to them.

Bourne hitches a ride to Paris with Marie, a girl he noticed in the Consulate. On the way, she asks him what kind of music he likes and he can’t answer. He confesses that he is an amnesiac. Jason shows Marie his stack of passports and talks about all the weird stuff he knows, like all six license plate numbers for the cars outside the diner, etc. Still, he has no clue who he is.

“How could I forget about you? You’re the only person I know.” – Jason

Jason and Marie find his Paris apartment. Jason hits the redial button on his phone and is connected to a Paris hotel. He then discovers that John Michael Kane – one of his aliases- was killed two weeks prior in an automobile accident. Moments later, an agent comes flying into the apartment and tries to kill him. Jason takes him out and breaks like, every other bone in his body. The man manages to hop up and runs out the window, where he falls to his death on the street below. Marie freaks, which proves that women have no business in the spy business. She’s in shock, so he drags her out onto the street and BOY this is an awesome movie.

The police see the couple in Marie’s rusty old Mini Cooper and start to chase them. Unfortunately for the long arm of the law, Jason is an expert getaway driver and he manages to elude them.

“So…uh, we got a bump coming up.” Jason

If he knows how to bake muffins and can give a good massage, he might just be the perfect man. Of course, he is blond, but that can’t be helped.

Jason slips the Coop into a parking garage and instructs Marie that she must never return to it. He says they will have to clean it out and wipe it down before mentioning that she will need to change her hair. Marie is still a little dazed, but she agrees with Jason anyway. Meanwhile, Wombosi shows up at the morgue in Paris to identify “Kane”, the man who he thinks tried to kill him. He looks at the body, but doesn’t recognize it. We learn that the agents planted this body, pretending it was “Kane” in hopes of fooling Wombosi.

Jason’s got Marie bent over the sink to dye her hair. Then he goes after it with a pair of scissors. Now this is where I would have to draw the line. Anyway, this has been a real turn-on for Marie, and she doesn’t waste time in letting Jason know she’d like to jump his bones.

The next morning, a sniper on the roof shoots Wombosi in the neck. Ouch. Jason and Marie have gone to the Hotel Regina – Kane’s last place of residence- to get his hotel bill. Jason can’t go in because he’s supposed to be dead, so he comes up with an elaborate plan to get the records. Marie surprises him by simply walking in and asking for them.

Back at CIA headquarters, the boss is blaming Wombosi’s assassination on Bourne. Jason determines that he is definitely Kane, and that the morgue has a body they’re keeping as Kane. Bourne pays off a morgue worker to show him the body, but the locker is empty. He rips a page out of the morgue’s sign in book and makes the connection between Kane and Wombosi. Finally they discover Wombosi had told the police that a man had come onto his yacht and tried to kill him three weeks earlier. Jason determines that he is that man, an assassin whom Wombosi chased off the boat and shot twice in the back.

The cops have discovered their hotel location, so Jason decides that he and Marie are no longer safe in Paris. Marie’s ex-boyfriend Eamon has a house in the country. He isn’t supposed to be there, so Marie and Jason decide that’s where they’ll go. Of course, Eamon shows up with two cute little kids in tow, not to mention the family dog. Eamon lets Jason and Marie spend the night anyway, and they’re all set to leave the next morning when the kids come running in to tell Eamon that the dog is missing. Jason is instantly suspicious and tells Eamon to get the kids into the basement immediately, they aren’t safe. Eamon and his family do as they are told, and Marie discovers that the phone is dead.

Jason figures out the location of Eamon’s double-barrel shotgun- way up out of the children’s reach- and blows something up (I can’t really tell what), creating a huge explosion and a cloud of black smoke he can move around in unnoticed. The sniper still spots Jason running into the woods and takes off after him. Jason manages to shoot the sniper twice, then interrogates him. The sniper reveals that both men work for Operation Treadstone, and says a few more cryptic things, including mention of the same headaches Jason describes in the first of the movie.

“Look at us…look at what they make you give.” – Sniper’s dying words

Bourne takes $30,000 out of his bank bag and sends the rest with Marie. He forces her to go away with Eamon and his kids for her own safety. Jason promises Marie that he is going to end this, and she goes.

Jason heads back into Eamon’s house with the dead sniper’s bag. He finds the man’s phone and ends up dialing Conklin, the CIA boss who has been after him all along. Jason tells Conklin that he has killed Marie to stop them from looking for her. He makes plans to meet Conklin alone on a bridge.

Jason heads to the designated bridge, but spots numerous CIA agents and refuses to meet. He does, however, manage to place a tracking device on Conklin’s car, which leads him to the Treadstone safe house in Paris. Jason figures out a way to set all the car alarms on the street off, effectively distracting the guards so that he can gain entry to the safe house. Jason kills the phones, and the building’s power. He gets both Conklin and Julia Stiles held at gunpoint. Conklin starts filling in some of Jason’s blanks. Jason has flashbacks to being on the boat with Wombosi. He remembers sneaking onto the yacht and putting a gun to Wombosi’s head, but he couldn’t go through with the assassination when he discovered the target’s small children there. Jason tells Conklin that he’s quitting, ordering him to report that Jason Bourne drowned two weeks ago. Suddenly he spots the bug in Conklin’s clothes and knocks the man unconscious right before engaging in a shootout with the agents who have arrived to take him out.

Bourne gets away and Conklin is shot to death by one of the agents from Hamburg. The order came from Conklin’s boss Abbott, who terminates the program. Abbott goes before a government committee to discuss the dissolution of Treadstone, claiming that it was an ineffective training program. After Abbott assures the committee that Treadstone is no more, he begins briefing them on the new project, codenamed Blackbriar, effectively setting things up for a sequel.

Marie has started a new life for herself by opening a store in Greece. Jason finds her and they hug.

It’s always interesting to watch a movie where you know a lot more than the main character. I couldn’t help but put myself in his shoes. What would I do if I woke up and didn’t know who or where I was? And then there’s Marie, who has got to be a little crazy for letting this strange man into her car.

However, my biggest concern with this movie is…what happened to the dog? Eamon’s dog, you know? I assume the agent killed him, but why? What was the point of killing an innocent dog? I know he probably did it so that he could sneak up to the house to kill the phones without being barked at or bitten, but still. He couldn’t have shot the dog with a tranquilizer gun? You know, something mild that would have worn off in an hour or two. In other movies people will sometimes bring raw steaks to distract the dogs with. I know it’s not a big deal, and no dogs were actually harmed in the making of this movie, but still. I’m a girl. When girls watch action movies, we think more about things like biceps and harmless animals getting killed than we do gun models or escape plans.

So even though I am greatly troubled by the disappearing dog, I still think this is a terrific movie. That’s why I’m giving it an A.

Off in search of who I am,

M. Bourne