TheMovieStory

The Bourne Identity is a 2002 spy film loosely based on Robert Ludlum’s novel of the same name.

It stars Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, an amnesiac attempting to discover his true identity amidst a clandestine conspiracy within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to track him down and arrest or kill him for inexplicably failing to carry out an officially unsanctioned assassination and then failing to report back in afterwards. Along the way he teams up with Marie, played by Franka Potente, who assists him on the initial part of his globe-trotting journey to learn about his past and regain his memories. The film also stars Chris Cooper as Alexander Conklin, Clive Owen as The Professor, Brian Cox as Ward Abbott, and Julia Stiles as Nicky Parsons.

The film was directed by Doug Liman and adapted for the screen by Tony Gilroy and William Blake Herron from the novel of the same name written by Robert Ludlum, who also produced the film alongside Frank Marshall. Universal Studios released the film to theaters in the United States on June 14, 2002 and it received a positive critical and public reaction. The film was followed by a 2004 sequel, The Bourne Supremacy, and a third part released in 2007 entitled The Bourne Ultimatum.

Plot

During a stormy night, a group of Italian fishermen find a man (Damon) floating in the Mediterranean Sea off Marseille, with two gunshot wounds in his back and a device with the number of a Swiss bank account embedded in his hip. Suffering from retrograde amnesia, he finds he is versed in several European languages and can perform uncommon tasks such as sea navigation and tying exotic knots in the ship’s ropes, but he cannot remember anything about himself or how he got there. When the ship docks in Oneglia, he sets off for Zürich to investigate the bank account.

At CIA headquarters in Langley, Deputy Director Ward Abbott finds out about a failed assassination attempt on deposed African dictator Nykwana Wombosi. Meanwhile, the mysterious man finds out he is curiously proficient in hand-to-hand combat and firearms usage when he subdues two Swiss police officers in an unthinking reflex action of self-defense. At the bank in Zürich, the man opens his safe deposit box to find several passports containing his picture, large amounts of assorted currencies, and a 9mm handgun. Still with no idea what his real name is, he assumes the one from the first US passport, Jason Bourne. When American and Swiss authorities attempt to capture him at the US Consulate, he offers Marie Helena Kreutz $20,000 to take him to Paris, the city of the address on his Jason Bourne passport. In the meantime, Alexander Conklin, the head of the black ops group Operation Treadstone, assures Abbott that he will destroy any evidence connecting them to the field agent responsible for the operation. He activates three “assets” to take down their fellow operative: Castel, Mannheim, and the Professor.

When Bourne arrives at the address on his passport, he is immediately recognized by the building superintendent, and based on the contents of his apartment, he concludes he is in the shipping business. In search of more clues, he hits redial on his phone and is connected to the Hotel Regina, who recognize one of his aliases, John Michael Kane. They tell him that Kane was a guest who died two weeks before in a car crash. A few moments later, Castel blasts through a window and engages Bourne in hand-to-hand combat. After Bourne subdues him he attempts to interrogate him, but Castel jumps out the window, preferring suicide (to interrogation by Bourne for information). Marie finds wanted posters in Castel’s bag with both hers and Bourne’s pictures on them.

Bourne continually advises Marie to leave him as he’s trying to figure out who he is and why people are after him. He tells her to go to the police and explain everything to them; she chooses to remain with him and encourages him to figure it out. After eluding the Paris police and spending the night, they follow the trail to the Hotel Regina. There, Marie asks for John Michael Kane’s hotel records. Meanwhile, Conklin plants a body in the Parisian morgue to fool Wombosi into thinking Kane is dead, but Wombosi knows that the body is not his assailant, and Conklin has Wombosi killed in his home by the Professor. Bourne investigates the incident, the previous assassination attempt, and John Michael Kane’s contacts, and concludes that he is the failed killer. He and Marie escape the city into the country to stay at Marie’s ex-lover’s house, where Jason decides that he no longer wants to know about his past.

In the morning, the Professor comes for Jason. Bourne uses a double-barreled shotgun to blow up the home’s fuel tank to distract the Professor (who was on a hilltop overlooking the home, armed with a SIG 552 modified to be a sniper rifle) and he runs to the woods. Bourne ultimately shoots the Professor twice with the shotgun and interrogates him briefly, revealing their connection to Operation Treadstone. The Professor dies almost immediately from blood loss, saying, “Look at this. Look at what they make you give.” Keeping $30,000, he sends Marie away with the rest of the money for her own safety. He uses the Professor’s phone to arrange a meeting with Conklin on the Pont Neuf, which he uses as a distraction to plant a tracking device on Conklin’s vehicle to discover the location of Operation Treadstone’s safe house in Paris.

Bourne uses an electronic device to trigger the car alarms of all the cars parked on the street, and when the noise distracts the guards, he climbs into the operations safe house where Nicky Parsons and Conklin are.

When he meets Conklin, he begins to remember his last mission. He had backed out of the (officially unsanctioned) Wombosi assassination after seeing Wombosi’s children. He realized that if he killed Wombosi he would have to do it right there in front of the children and even might have to kill all the children as potential witnesses, since Wombosi’s murder was supposed to look like it had been carried out by members of his own cartel. Bourne was then shot while escaping the fast-moving boat and left behind for dead in the water. He tells Conklin that he is leaving Treadstone and not to try to find him. He then realizes Conklin silently triggered an alarm and has backup on the way. Bourne leaves Nicky unharmed, has a shootout with several CIA agents, and escapes into the night. Abbott decides that Treadstone should be closed down and has the last operative murder Conklin. He goes before an Oversight Committee and glibly explains Treadstone away as an ineffective assassin-training program then immediately shifts the focus of the hearing to an idea for a new project codenamed “Blackbriar.” Some time later, Jason finds Marie in Mykonos, renting out scooters to tourists, and the two reunite as the film ends with Moby’s “Extreme Ways” playing.

Production

Director Doug Liman stated that he had been a fan of the source novel by Robert Ludlum since he read it in high school. Near the end of production of Liman’s previous film Swingers, Liman decided to develop a film adaptation of the novel. After more than two years of securing rights to the book from Warner Brothers and a further year of screenplay development with screenwriter Tony Gilroy, the film went through two years of production.[3] From the onset of filming, difficulties with the studio slowed the film’s development and caused a rift between the director and Universal Studios, as executives were unhappy with the film’s pacing, emphasis on small scale action sequences, and the general relationship between themselves and Liman, who was suspicious of direct studio involvement.[4] A number of reshoots and rewrites late in development and scheduling problems delayed the film from its original release target date of September 2001 to June 2002 and took it $8,000,000 over budget from the initial budget of $52,000,000; screenwriter Tony Gilroy faxed elements of screenplay rewrites almost throughout the entire duration of filming.[4] A particular point of contention in regards to the original Tony Gilroy script were the scenes set in the farmhouse near the film’s conclusion. Liman and actor Matt Damon fought to keep the scenes in the film after they were excised in a third-act rewrite that was insisted upon by the studio. Liman and Damon argued that, though the scenes were low key, they were integral to the audience’s understanding of the Bourne character and the film’s central themes. The farmhouse sequence consequently went through many rewrites from its original incarnation before its inclusion in the final product. Other issues included the studio’s desire to substitute Montreal or Prague for Paris in order to lower costs, Liman’s insistence on the use of a French-speaking film crew, and poor test audience reactions to the film’s Paris finale. The latter required a late return to location in order to shoot a new, more action-oriented conclusion to the Paris story arc.[5] Damon described the production as a struggle, citing the early conflicts that he and Liman had with the studio, but denied that it was an overtly difficult process, stating, “When I hear people saying that the production was a nightmare it’s like, a ‘nightmare’? Shooting’s always hard, but we finished.”

Liman’s directorial method was often hands-on. Many times he operated the camera himself in order to create what he believed was a more intimate relationship between himself, the material, and the actors. He felt that this connection was lost if he simply observed the recording on a monitor. This was a mindset he developed from his background as a small-scale indie film maker.

A wide range of actors were approached by Liman for the role of Bourne, including Russell Crowe and Sylvester Stallone, before he eventually cast Matt Damon. Liman found that Damon understood and appreciated that, though The Bourne Identity would have its share of action, the focus was primarily on character and plot.Damon, who had never played such a physically demanding role, insisted on performing many of the stunts himself. With stunt choreographer Nick Powell and trainer Jeff Imada, Damon underwent three months of extensive training in stunt work, the use of weapons, boxing, and eskrima. Damon eventually performed a significant number of the film’s stunts himself, including hand-to-hand combat and climbing the safe house walls near the film’s conclusion.[7] Franka Potente’s performance in Run Lola Run prompted Liman to approach her for the part of Marie Helena Kreutz. Liman desired to cast an actress who was unfamiliar to American audiences yet would be a suitable opposite for the Bourne character. Filming took place in Prague, Paris, Imperia, Rome, Mykonos, and Zürich; several scenes set in Zürich were also filmed in Prague.

The acclaimed car chase sequence was filmed primarily by the second unit under director Alexander Witt. The unit shot in various locations around Paris while Liman was filming the main story arc elsewhere in the city. The finished footage was eventually edited together to create the illusion of a coherent journey. Liman confessed that “anyone who really knows Paris will find it illogical,” since few of the locations used in the car chase actually connect to each other. Liman took only a few of the shots himself; his most notable chase sequence shots were those of Matt Damon and Franka Potente while inside the car.

The inner workings of the fictitious Treadstone organization were inspired by Liman’s father’s job in the National Security Agency (NSA) under President Ronald Reagan. Of particular inspiration were Liman’s father’s memoirs regarding his involvement in the investigation of the Iran-Contra affair. Many aspects of the Alexander Conklin character were based on his father’s recollections of Oliver North. Liman admitted that he jettisoned much of the content of the novel beyond the central premise, in order to modernize the material and to conform it to his own beliefs regarding United States foreign policy. However, Liman was careful not to cram his political views down “the audiences’ throat”. There were initial concerns regarding the film’s possible obsolescence and overall reception in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, but these concerns proved groundless.

Cast

• Matt Damon as Jason Bourne: an amnesiac assassin out of Paris who is being pursued by his former employers. Main protagonist.
• Franka Potente as Marie Helena Kreutz: a Bohemian German traveller helping Bourne, who in the middle forms a relationship with him.
• Chris Cooper as Alexander Conklin: the coordinator of Treadstone and Bourne’s immediate superior.
• Brian Cox as Ward Abbott: a CIA Deputy Director and Conklin’s immediate superior.
• Julia Stiles as Nicky Parsons: a CIA field operative coordinating logistics for agents; she operates out of Paris.
• Clive Owen as The Professor: a Treadstone operative based out of Barcelona.
• Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Nykwana Wombosi: a deposed African dictator who was Bourne’s last target prior to his amnesia.
• Gabriel Mann as Danny Zorn: Conklin’s assistant and a key member of Operation Treadstone’s control team.
• Nicky Naude as Castel: a Treadstone operative based out of Rome.
• Russell Levy as Manheim: a Treadstone operative based out of Hamburg.

Awards