THE BOURNE IDENTITY (2002)  **1/2

Reviewed 5/14/02

THE BOURNE IDENTITY is a passable action thriller with very little that is wrong with it, but also very little that is right.

The movie opens on a dark and stormy night, already announcing its lack of originality.  A fishing boat near Marseille finds an amnesiac American floating on the open seas with two bullet wounds in him.  Returning to shore, the American inadvertently discovers that not only can he speak French and German fluently, but his hand-to-hand combat skills make James Bond look like grade school bully.  He traces his identity to a security deposit box in a Zurich bank where he finds he may or may not be Jason Bourne.  Whoever he is, he has a lot of cash on hand.

The movie makes no bones about Bourne’s past, and lets the audience in on it from the beginning.  Ted Conklin (Chris Cooper) runs a renegade branch of the CIA which had Bourne try to assassinate an ousted African warlord (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje looking like he’s doing an impersonation of Eddie Murphy from COMING TO AMERICA).  Bourne somehow botched the job, and Conklin wants Bourne’s existence wiped from the earth to keep anything from being traced back to him.  Expert agents from Barcelona, Hamburg, and Rome are called in to take out Bourne.  (You know they are experts because they don’t smile.)

As Bourne starts to get the idea that people are out to get him, he acquires an accidental ally in the form of Marie Kreutz (RUN LOLA RUN’s Franka Potente) who agrees to drive him from Zurich to Paris for $20,000.  Who knows why Marie sticks around when the bullets start flying and the cars go chasing, but apparently she’s ready to hurl headlong into a romance with a stranger who doesn’t even know himself who he is.

A surprising movie coming from director Doug Liman, THE BOURNE IDENTITY, is rote and unoriginal.  Liman’s low-budget GO and SWINGERS may be overrated, but at least they had some personality.  THE BOURNE IDENTITY is basically THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT plus REPLACEMENT KILLERS, though IDENTITY comes with better pacing, picturesque European locations, and a nice touch of humor.  Matt Damon with his broad forehead, blunt nose, sculpted cheeckbones, and Jay Leno-chin might look hyper-masculine, but his presence is too bland and his movement lacks the physical grace to make him a believable action hero.  Potente is much better.  Thankfully, she does not act glibly like she knows she’s in a movie.  Instead of taking everything for granted when she encounters death and mayhem, she seems genuinely shocked.  Chris Cooper is a pretty one-dimensional villain whose every word is part of a spittle-filled rant.  Julia Stiles appears stranded in a bit part as a CIA communications monitor.  Her presence in this movie, not Bourne’s identity, is the real mystery.