Review of Bourne Identity, The: Explosive Extended Edition (Widescreen)

Introduction

Dredged out of the drink by mucky Mediterranean sailors with only a couple of bullet holes and a Swiss bank account number lodged in his hip to remember himself by, Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) stumbles around Zurich, reeling from amnesia and the mysterious contents of a safe deposit box; amongst his roguish apparel - a dozen passports and a pistol. After a bone-snapping ruck in the US embassy and a miraculous escape that makes a ninja look like a nancy boy, Bourne sensibly reasons that he probably isn`t a claims adjuster from Slough. Intuitively wary of any further scrutiny from the authorities, Bourne commandeers the assistance of sexy German slacker Marie (Franka Potente) to journey back to Paris in search of his true identity. Little does Bourne know, however, that a black ops CIA unit lead by anger-management-phobe Chris Cooper and anti-Atkins chubber Brian Cox have sent multiple assassins to track him down, not because of something he has uncovered, but because he used to be one of them.

Video

Cinematographer Oliver Wood captures a crisp, chilly landscape to translate the hero`s unexpressed disconnection, the film gaining considerable atmosphere from its exceptional location shooting. Excellent transfer without noticeable flaws.

Audio

Stripping away the audio commentary on the previous release has not meant replacement with the supple sounds of DTS. Over-inflated sound design will still batter your speakers senseless.

Features

The fact that this glorified marketing gimmick for this Summer`s sequel, `The Bourne Supremacy`, has bafflingly omitted that film`s trailer, is a sign of things to come from this sloppy "Explosive Extended Edition." Not much is revealed about said sequel in `From Identity to Supremacy`, a brief featurette where Potente and Damon talk lucidly about their involvement and their character`s pragmatic romance. Similar featurettes follow this bite-sized approach: there`s a sycophantic whistle-stop tour of the life of author Robert Ludlum; `Cloak and Dagger` a trite look into black operations where an ex-spook offers his learned opinion on the movie. And the unintentionally hilarious `The Bourne Diagnosis` where a psychologist delivers pointed insights such as: "I think Marie is very helpful to Bourne." Wow, it`s almost as if he watched the film.

Slightly better are an analysis of the sound design (complete with one of those silly multi-channel deconstructions) and `Inside a Fight Scene,` offering a neat, entertaining look into the choreography and shooting of one of the film`s many tendon-snapping confrontations. Best of the bunch is `Access Granted` an interview with writer Tony Gilroy, who intelligently compresses his justifications behind script changes from the novel: "the film is about a guy who thinks he`s bad and finds out he`s good, the film is about a guy who thinks he`s good and finds out he`s bad."

Given that the bulk of the disc is composed of filler like actor profiles and a Moby music video, the fact that the centrepiece of the set turns out to be a big let-down comes as no surprise. Whilst the filmmakers insist that the previously unseen bookend scenes were a victim of post-9/11 vetting, upon seeing them the more obvious reason, that they are extraneous, muddy and not clear-cut up-beat, seems a more obvious motivation behind their removal.

Conclusion

In `The Bourne Identity`, a spook with a blind spot for his dark past has to reveal the mystery surrounding the disappearance of his own self, and you`d have to have amnesia not to realise that since professional pot-boiling novelist Robert Ludlum first starting writing his books featuring the eponymous hero, that this idea has been re-heated so often that the premise lacks even the faintest rumor of originality. The fact that director Doug Liman and screenwriter Tony Gilroy play things fairly straight (unlike say, the riotous spitfire action/comedy of `The Long Kiss Goodnight`) hardens the film`s sheen of ironclad squareness.

Some muted post-Cold War political savvy and fleeting moments of absurd humor manage to lighten things periodically, but it`s Potente who breathes fresh, believable air into an underwritten, disheveled damsel role, rendering lost soul Marie in ambiguous, unaffected tones. If Damon seems as perplexed by his casting as the lithe super-spy as the audience is, matters are improved by slick fight choreography and some snappy dialogue that concisely captures his characters innate, chilling physical mastery. And if he never quite shakes his boyish baggage, it ends up adding, rather that detracting, from his character`s own confusion over his identity.

Set-pieces are variable, with the corking US Embassy breakout (complete with sedate, vertiginous climax) an early highlight. Other sequences: a brutal bout of fisticuffs with an Aryan minotaur and a car-chase through Paris are marred by their contrived plot justification and the simple fact that it`s all been done before, and better. Despite its Indie kudos, `The Bourne Identity` is just too routine to be exceptional viewing, and with the proliferation of spy shows and covert ops movies, most of Ludlum`s tricksy plot twists have become hoary cliches, with its hushed agency dynamics lacking both urgency and authenticity. The CIA war-room footage in particular looks positively quaint, and the film`s deployment of a cabal of mute, lone-wolf caricature assassins, is a mere flinch away from self-parody.

The central failure of the film however, is Bourne himself: even as Damon peels away layers of mystery with a compelling sense of his character`s dual nature (his coldness and his longing), it can`t disguise the fact that the story becomes less and less interesting the more he uncovers, and when the truth of Bourne`s identity is finally revealed, its lame nexus of staggered cliches finally exposed, a sigh of anti-climax isn`t too far off. A spy thriller about a man`s search for his identity is all well and good, it`s just too bad it turns out he doesn`t have an identity worth searching for.