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Words cannot begin to describe how disappointing I thought this movie was
from the beginning to the end. If you want to spend $7.50 for an action
story, buy the book.
For those who have read the book, the only thing about the movie they will
recognize is the beginning scene with Jason Bourne (played by Matt Damon) being fished out of the water, unconscious from several bullet wounds. After that, the movie shifts from the book to a rather run-of-the-mill action movie. It wasn’t very exciting for most of the duration, although there was one good scene where everybody in the theater was startled. It was so boring and predictable that I spent half the movie trying to decide if one of the actors was Julia Stiles (it was).
I wonder if the movie would have been better if the French government hadn’t
caught Carlos the Jackal, an infamous assassin in Europe in the 70s and
80s, and imprisoned him a few years ago. The Bourne Identity the novel (see Tony’s review) is the story of a CIA-trained assassin who is trying to catch Carlos by claiming credit for his assassinations. Carlos or someone catches up with
Jason Bourne at the beginning of the book and shoots him. Jason loses his
memory and, in the process of trying to figure out who he is, is pursued by
the CIA who want to know what happened to their agent and Carlos, who is
still trying to kill him. The movie, on the other hand, is about a CIA assassin who is shot and, in the process of trying to discover who he is, tries to shut down some super-secret ring of CIA assassins. The movie loses something without the Carlos angle. Jason Bourne is not just another well-trained CIA assassin. He was trained specifically to find Carlos, disrupt his organization and kill him. The movie doesn’t have any of this, and it may have been better if it had.
Unless you’re a really big fan of Matt Damon, I recommend spending your
money on the book rather than seeing the movie.
