The Bourne Identity (DVD Screening)

(Spoilers)

The Bourne series is just another in the long list of movies that I haven’t seen yet, I promise I am working my way through them. I always knew that I would get round to them eventually as them seemed like solid action movies and they always get great reviews, this is what I thought of the first in the series.

The Bourne Identity is a good start to this series and has plenty going for it. There are certain films that you can tell are going to be good just from the outset, this was one of them.  Matt Damon puts in a really great performance being believable from the word go. Themes similar to the ones present here have been done since but I am sure at the time this was quite a fresh idea – the whole memory loss thing. The right amount of information is revealed at the right time throughout the movie, you get given enough to avoid you from getting bored but not too much as to remove all intrigue from the movie, some questions have still been left unanswered which I am sure will be explored in the future installments. I liked this, it is clear that this movie is part of a series and I think that is where its strength will lie, as a part of a series rather than a stand alone film.

The action featured in the Bourne Identity was good, the best action does come in the first half of the movie with a great car chase and a sequence in the American embassy. It is here we get to see Damon put his action skills to use, another highlight was a fight in Bournes apartment in Paris. This kind of shows how awesome a character Jason Bourne is, using a biro as a weapon – that was pretty badass.  I am excited to see more of this Bourne in the next movies as there is potential here for some unreal action sequences. More of these scenes would have been good throughout as the action did tail off slightly but not at the expense of the tension and suspense so that was okay, but a more dramatic finale would have been more to my taste. Although ditching Marie was the right choice as she was quite annoying – I hope she either improves in the future films or just simply isn’t in them! The Bourne Identity has set up the next installments well and I am looking forward to getting stuck into them, can quickly see this series becoming one of my favourites.

BIGGEST FLAW – The action tailing off towards the end

BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT – Damon was pretty great

Rating – 8/10