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This Matt Damon vehicle never has a chance.
By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic
© St. Petersburg Times, published June 13, 2002
Even a car chase appears sluggish in The Bourne Identity, a spy movie that never comes in from a cold truth: Amnesia is a dull movie device. If there's a less exciting way to get a hero into a jam, I've forgotten it.
Amnesia isn't a fatal ailment, but it could be the death of Jason Bourne (woefully miscast Matt Damon), a CIA assassin found floating in the Mediterranean Sea without a life jacket or memory. Bourne has two bullets in his back (shouldn't there be a head injury?) and an implant in his thigh containing a Swiss bank account number, but no idea how they got there. Director Doug Liman (Go), working from Robert Ludlum's novel, doesn't have many thrilling ideas to explain it.
Bourne recuperates in two weeks on the fishing vessel that rescues him, then heads to the bank while Liman encourages us to admire the scenery along the way. A safe deposit box contains several passports, lots of money and one of several guns Bourne leaves behind despite the fact that armed people are chasing him. He meets a tourist named Marie (Run Lola Run's Franka Potente) and hitches a ride to Paris for the next clue to his identity.
And so it goes repeatedly, with commutes between European cities offering Bourne lots of time to scrunch his eyebrows and gripe about how he doesn't know who he is. After parking, he walks into an apartment or office and looks around until someone attacks, then hops back into Marie's car. The only people in the know are CIA agents (Chris Cooper, Brian Cox) tracking him down for a vague reason that, when revealed, is no big deal. Bourne's killer instincts return at convenient times, of course.
Liman proved with Go and Swingers that he knows how to make a movie move, but that knack deserts him here. A couple of set pieces are well-staged -- Bourne's human-fly routine on a building, the climactic showdown -- but the rest of The Bourne Identity is strangely passive. In the world of spy games, this movie is tic tac toe.
Damon's frat-boy countenance doesn't suit his character, especially in those bogus passport photos when he's supposed to be various nationalities. He simply isn't mean or worldly enough to do what he's doing. Potente shows some spunk in her thankless role, but Cooper (October Sky, Lone Star) ratchets his intensity to such a level that some in the audience Monday laughed at his menace. Not what Liman intended, I'm sure.
Anyone who loved Liman's automotive mayhem in Go -- Steppenwolf never sounded cooler -- will be disappointed when the obligatory car chase begins. Typical fender-bending, slowed by narrow Parisian streets so much that a sliding motorcycle practically needs to be shoved into a collision. Just when The Bourne Identity needs to push the gas pedal, Liman pulls the choke. The showcase chase, like the rest of The Bourne Identity, is appropriately forgettable.
Grade: C-
Director: Doug Liman
Cast: Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Clive Owen, Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, Julia Stiles, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje
Screenplay: Tony Gilroy, William Blake Herron, based on the novel by Robert Ludlum
Rating: PG-13; violence, profanity
Running time: 110 min.