Susan Granger’s review of “THE BOURNE IDENTITY” (Universal Pictures)
In this screen adaptation of Robert Ludlum’s amnesiac spy thriller, Matt Damon plays Jason Bourne, an American secret agent who has been found floating unconscious in the Mediterranean Sea. He’s alive but he’s forgotten who he is and what he does. The one thing he knows is that he has an impressive array of passports and a load of cash stashed in Swiss bank – and that lots of people want him dead, including the agency he works for. Problem is: he doesn’t know why. He needs to get to Paris, where he has reason to believe he has an apartment, so he offers $10,000 to a broke-but-beautiful German woman, Franka Potente (“Run Lola Run”), whom he meets outside the American Embassy in Zurich. (Actually, it’s Prague; we’re not supposed to see the difference.) It’s an offer she can’t refuse – and, predictably, they fall in love en route while dodging an array of determined assassins who are keeping them under surveillance. Writers Tony Gilroy and William Black Herron, along with director Doug Liman (“Swingers,” “Go”), make Bourne’s clandestine CIA supervisor into the conventional villain, ruthlessly personified by Chris Cooper, along with his amoral boss, Brian Cox. When Robert Ludlum wrote this suspense novel in 1980, Europe was chilled by the Cold War and there was a mysterious, real-life international terrorist named Carlos on the loose. Now it’s all a mindless, sinister chase with little cause or substance, even though bland Matt Damon does his darnest to be convincing. All-in-all, though, Christopher Nolan’s “Memento” was a much better cinematic take on memory loss. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Bourne Identity” is a far-fetched, clichŽ-filled, action-packed 6. But you need more than generic fla
sh, dash and martial-arts moves to make a memorable thriller. Or do you?