Review for The Bourne Identity

Introduction

Second time is the charm! I first bought the Bourne Identity Blu-ray for a couple of pounds from a high street discount store a few years ago, a pristine new copy that crashed 30-odd minutes into the film. At that price, it was cheaper to bin the disc and keep the spare empty case. But recently I found a second hand copy at my local CEX for fifty pence, a disc that looks the worse for wear, but plays just fine. You might wonder why I’m such a cheap bastard when it comes to this movie, but watching the DVD way back when, inspired me to go see The Bourne Supremacy sequel on the week of release in the cinema. That’s a film that annoyed me in the first five minutes by blatantly fridging the best character from the first film. No matter how faithful it might be to the Ludlum novels, it was enough to convince me to spend as little time and money on this franchise as I could. That’s a matter for a review I intend never to write, but I still do like the first film enough to spend a few pennies on it.


A man is fished, half-drowned from the Mediterranean. Suffering from amnesia and gunshot wounds, he’s nursed back to health by the trawler’s doctor, although he can’t make head or tail of who he is. The only clues he has are an unexplained facility with languages, and an implant removed from his body with a Zurich bank account number on it. Arriving in Zurich in an unkempt state naturally arouses the suspicions of the authorities, revealing another talent for unarmed combat. The bank has a safe deposit box, with thousands in cash and a passport belonging to one Jason Bourne, and discretely hidden away, half a dozen other passports and a weapon.


Leaving the weapon behind, he decides to investigate the Bourne identity, as it seems that is who he is, but he has awakened a sleeping monster, and soon a mysterious monolithic organisation is hunting him. With the aid of $20000 dollars, he elicits the aid of Marie Kreutz, a passing motorist, to drive him safely to his address in Paris, but it isn’t long before the both of them are being pursued. Now, finding out who he truly is, is a matter of life or death for Jason Bourne.

The Disc

The Bourne Identity was made in 2002 if you can believe that at this point, while this Blu-ray came out in 2008-9, one of the earlier releases on that format. You get a 2.35:1 widescreen 1080p transfer with the choice between DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround English, DTS 5.1 Surround French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Japanese, with subtitles in these languages and Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Mandarin, Swedish, Portuguese, Norwegian, and Korean. It’s not a great transfer, although it is an obvious HD upgrade over the DVD release. It does look to be sourced from the same master as that DVD. The image is clear and sharp enough, detail levels are good, although colours are a little muted beyond what the film’s winter setting might suggest. Skin tones are a little flat, and the film lacks that pop that you would expect from HD presentations. I can’t seen any sign of an updated Blu-ray transfer in the last 15 years, but there was a 4K UHD release a few years ago that might be preferable. I have no complaints about the audio, which is nice and immersive, making the most of the action and driving music, while keeping the dialogue clear for the most part.

Extras

You get one disc in a BD Amaray case, which boots to an animated menu.

The disc has plenty of extras, even if they are of the short kind, and being in SD, are most likely taken from previous DVD releases.

The Ludlum Identity (12:49)
The Ludlum Supremacy (12:41)
The Ludlum Ultimatum (24:50)
Alternate Opening and Alternate Ending (10:46)
Deleted Scenes x4 (6:58)
Extended Farmhouse Scene (0:58)
The Birth of the Bourne Identity (14:32)


The Bourne Mastermind: Robert Ludlum (5:44)
Access Granted: An Interview with Co-Writer Tony Gilroy (4:03)
From Identity to Supremacy: Jason and Marie (3:37)
The Bourne Diagnosis (3:26)
Cloak and Dagger: Covert Ops (5:31)
Inside a Fight Sequence (4:43)
Moby “Extreme Ways” Music Video (3:59)
Audio Commentary with director Doug Liman

There is also a BD Live link on the disc, most likely defunct at this juncture, and U-Control pop up content during playback, Picture in Picture, Treadstone Files, and Bourne Orientation.

Conclusion

Even after all this time, The Bourne Identity is a tense, exciting spy thriller that has me on the edge of my seat most of the way through. It doesn’t insult the intelligence with too much exposition, and it keeps the plot ambiguous for the most part, giving few clues away. We are pretty much in the same position as the amnesiac Jason Bourne, and while the film does let us get ahead of him in finding out what’s going on, we’re never too far ahead to appreciate the twists and turns, or to share in his paranoia as it seems the world is closing in on him.


Matt Damon nails the role as Jason Bourne; he’s immediately believable as the amnesiac with a dark past. His bewilderment and confusion isn’t allowed to become the focus of the film, especially when his skills start to resurface. When it becomes apparent that he is far from a mundane civilian, he gains an intensity of focus and lethal intent that is very believable. He has some good chemistry with Franka Potente who plays Marie, the woman who helps him evade his pursuers. There is also solid support from Chris Cooper, Brian Cox and Clive Owen.


As a spy thriller, The Bourne Identity ranks among the best. It’s remarkably tense, and the thrills don’t cease. Yet it manages this without gimmicks, gadgets or gizmos. There is a nice moment of nostalgia, seeing a classic mini in a car chase again, and there is a nice touch of dry comedy to counterbalance the suspense. The direction is spot on, fast paced and snappy and there is a tension and hint of paranoia running all the way through. The Bourne Identity manages this through good characterisation and a tight story. If there is a flaw, it’s that the story is thin. When all the thrills are done, the story underneath is a simple and indeed familiar one, the amnesiac caught up in a world of espionage. It’s well written and tightly plotted, and little puzzles introduced early on are satisfactorily resolved as the film progresses, but as a film it relies heavily on these revelations and plot twists, something that only works the one time.


However watching it again, I realise that the spy shenanigans are nowhere near as important to the film, as the exploration of a man seeking out his own past, only to find that it isn’t the kind of past he can be proud of. Instead he has to determine whether he is a good man, by the choices that he now makes. It’s a far more appealing story direction, and the way The Bourne Identity focuses on this character dilemma actually makes it a far better film than its sequels, which instead play as rather more straightforward spy thrillers.


The Bourne Identity is a good movie that could be even better if I could ever bleach the memory of The Bourne Supremacy out of my skull. The Blu-ray is watchable enough, but worse films have had BD upgrades at this point. It seems this disc is still all that you can get in HD, even after all this time. Maybe it is time to upgrade to UHD and start the whole double-dip cycle all over again.