- Who has a safety deposit box full of money and six passports and a gun? Who has a bank account number in their hip?
- Who indeed? The closest we get to an answer is the name Jason Bourne (Matt Damon). Bourne is presumably not his real name, of course, if those multiple passports are any indication. All the audience knows for certain is that Bourne was found floating in the Mediterranean with two gunshot wounds in his back. But that's all Bourne knows, too. Whatever happened appears to have granted him some form of amnesia, leaving him with only that bank account number to go on. Perhaps the only things more surprising than the contents of his safety deposit box are his apparently reflexive martial arts skills that leave two Zurich policemen lying unconscious in the snow. Who is this guy, anyway?
- It turns out that Bourne isn't the only one searching for himself. When a covert operations center, run by the wonderfully gruff Agent Conklin (Chris Cooper) and supervised by the slippery C.I.A. spook Abbott (Brian Cox), discovers that Bourne has accessed his bank accounts, they quickly mobilize. Their first approach is to ambush Bourne at the U.S. Embassy in Zurich, but it's tough to catch a guy who won't hesitate to free climb on the outsides of snow-covered buildings. Maybe they'll have more luck tracking a German itinerant named Marie (Franka Potente), whose innocuous embassy visit quickly transforms into a taxi service for amnesiac assassins heading to Paris. Regardless, this sounds like a job for the Project Treadstone assassins.
- The assassins (Nicky Naude, Russell Levy, and Clive Owen) are a solitary and taciturn bunch, to be sure. They may lead seemingly normal lives, to the extent that it would be normal to have Clive Owen as a piano teacher, but a single cell phone call from Conklin and company transforms them into something else entirely. Now these heartless killers are converging on Bourne in Paris, intent on stopping him at any cost. In the meantime, Bourne has to figure out how a recently assassinated African warlord named Wombosi (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) fits in with his previous life, hopefully not getting himself or the increasingly affectionate Marie killed in the process. It's days like these that make you want to just forget it all.
- Because the subsequent entries in the Bourne series feature such an impressive degree of continuity, it's easy to forget that The Bourne Identity is an excellent standalone film, too. From its superb Euro-location filming and cool wintry cinematography to its riveting chase and fight scenes to a soundtrack that is every bit as good (if not as bombastic) as anything John Barry ever did, the film hits all of the right notes. The entire cast is terrific, especially Damon who proves again and again that he is talented enough to star in nearly any genre of film. Cooper and Cox, too, are completely convincing as the crabby, craggy men who always run shadow organizations in the movies. The film's greatest accomplishment, however, may be its occasional willingness to pause and allow its characters a few moments of pathos. It's tough to imagine a James Bond or Mission: Impossible villain turning to the hero and issuing dying words as a surprisingly sympathetic as "Look at what they make you give."
