WhatzUp

The Bourne Identity
by Derek Neff

The grump in me has to wonder why it is that, in the world of movies, it’s considered a big step forward in the life of an independent filmmaker when he (or she) gets to make a big-budget action movie. Take the case of Doug Liman. Liman came out of the gate strong in 1996 with the hilarious and fully-realized Swingers, a small movie about dating, ambition and friendship. For all its faults — and I’m a huge fan of the movie, so you can’t get me to list them — Swingers was one of the freshest comedies to come out in years, and it was a surprise hit to boot.

Liman’s follow-up to Swingers, Go, seemed a logical enough progression. Although mis-packaged as sort of a teen sex comedy, Go was actually a whirlwind of narrative prowess, with three (or more) stories that loosely interconnected in the style of Pulp Fiction.

It’s not so surprising that directors like Liman view the opportunity to make a film like The Bourne Identity as a great leap forward in their career. In the long-term scheme of things, it makes a lot of sense: bring Hollywood a hit with this project and perhaps you’ll get financed to do something more personal down the line. Independent directors must stay up late thinking how much easier their jobs would have been had their films been better financed. I just wonder what Hollywood is thinking when, every time a director of grit and promise enters the picture, they instantly seduce them with money and tame them with the latest standard tripe, so often neutralizing the very directorial strengths they recognized in the director to begin with.

But Liman is having none of it. Liman, it is clear, isn’t interested in making a bad movie now just so that he can make a good one later. No, Liman is actually going the same route that Bryan Singer, the director of The Usual Suspects, took when he made X-Men: Liman has decided to make a good action movie despite the unpromising nature of the project.

And make no mistake about it: The Bourne Identity is terrific. Based on the best-selling novel by Robert Ludlum (who died soon before the movie was released), the movie begins with a man found dying of gunshot wounds in the middle of the ocean by a fishing vessel. The man in question (played by Matt Damon) has no memory of how he got there or even of who he is, but he

quickly begins to realize that he possesses certain skills that no normal person has. He fights like a demon, he reads and speaks several languages, his instinct for impending danger is impeccable, he’s constantly looking for possible threats and memorizing escape routes. And he has a safety deposit box in Switzerland containing numerous passports under various pseudonyms, a gun and wads of cash. One of the names on the passports is Jason Bourne.

During a masterfully executed action scene in Zurich’s American Embassy, Bourne meets up with our movie’s heroine, a down-on-her-luck Marie (Franka Potente, whom you might recognize from Run Lola Run). Marie agrees to drive Bourne — a fugitive on the run from would-be assassins for reasons he doesn’t even recall — to Paris in her beat-up Austin Mini for $20,000. Along the way, of course, the two fall for each other.

As Bourne, Damon is pitch-perfect. We are absolutely convinced that Bourne possesses almost preternatural spying skills at the same time that Damon’s down-to-earth, aw-shucks charm reminds us that Bourne is all too human. It’s almost like Damon doesn’t realize he’s playing a cliche. He stammers, he apologizes while driving Marie’s crappy car like a demon through the streets (and sidewalks, and stairsteps) of Paris. You could tell he himself would be getting a great kick out of his own fighting skills if he didn’t have the gnawing suspicion that the skills have been honed to do horrible things. I can’t imagine any other actor doing this role as well as Damon.

And as Marie, Potente displays the perfect mixture of elation, fear and winsome energy. I’m not sure what it is about Potente’s face that conveys flight, escape, adventure (maybe in her next role she should play someone more rooted and stable, before she gets typecast), but whatever it is, it works.

And the action scenes. How Liman’s visual style has evolved from fairly static shots of barely-post-adolescent men gabbing with each other in a crowded bar in Swingers to wildly kinetic scenes of snapping bones, rattling guns, and stomping feet in Bourne is beyond me. All I can say is that Bourne easily has half a dozen scenes that take the breath away in their brisk execution. Perhaps most surprising of all, considering the genre in which he is working (aren’t the action scenes in spy movies supposed to be sort of antiseptically comic-bookish?), Liman’s scenes convey panic, pain, ugliness, desperation, and exertion. Nobody fighting in these scenes would not rather be doing something else.

I’m looking forward to the next stage in Liman’s career. If this is what he can do while “selling out,” it’s almost scary to contemplate what he would do when given carte blanche.