In preparation for the release of the upcoming film The Bourne Supremacy I decided to sit down and have another look at The Bourne Identity. I have to say that the second film in this series has a lot to live up to.
Bourne Identity opens with our unidentified protagonist afloat in the Mediterranean, presumably dead. He is picked up (unconscious) by a fishing boat where immediately it's apparant that he is not just a regular shmoe. The closest the boat has to a doctor pulls bullets out of our mystery man's back, as well as an implanted capsule containing what seems to be a bank account number saved in a rather ingenious way. Mystery man (Matt Damon) awakens briefly, groggy but immediately aggressively defensive, and it's divulged that he does not know who he is.
From there on we see that we'll be taken on a journey where we will know just as much as he does, and things will be made clear only as he discovers them himself. Shortly after arriving back on land (in Germany), clueless as where to turn, we get a peek at what is to come. Our hero is accosted from his sleep on a park bench in the middle of the night by two police officers, and before you can say "what happened?" he overpowers the two gentlemen.
The cool thing about that scene is that when he defends himself, he seems to go into autopilot, surprising even himself in the knowledge that he knows how to beat the hell out of two guys in as many seconds flat.
And so it goes from there, but never quite where I thought it would go. I was kept very interested in the film by wanting to figure out who and what he (ok, Jason Bourne) was and how he arrived at his current status.
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