The Bourne Identity

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Movie Details

• Genre: Action/Adventure, Suspense/Thriller
• Release Date: 2002-06-14 Nationwide
• Running Time: 118 min.
• Director: Doug Liman
• Cast: Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Julia Stiles, Chris Cooper, Brian Cox
• Producer: Richard Gladstein, Doug Liman, Patrick Crowley
• Writer: Tony Gilroy, William Blake Herron, David Self
• Distributor: Universal Pictures
• Official Site: The Bourne Identity Official Site

An impeccably nondescript actor whose impersonation of an impersonator remains his most indelible turn, Matt Damon is brilliantly cast as the titular amnesiac in this belated adaptation of Robert Ludlum's Eighties-era espionage novel. Introduced as a shadowy figure floating in the Mediterranean just south of Marseilles, Damon's neatly groomed question mark is plucked out of the sea and saved from death by benevolent fishermen who ask for his name and then watch him faint before he can answer. Later described as "a malfunctioning $30 million weapon" (actually, the actor's paycheck was a mere $10 million for this one), our wayward hero traces the Swiss bank-account number implanted in his body to a safe-deposit box that includes stacks of cash and a gun. (What more could the genre require, even for a cipher of a star?) Bourne, we discover, is a secret agent of sorts, which maybe helps to explain why he keeps the Damon faithful waiting a full hour to confirm that...he isn't gay. Not counting the taut scene of Bourne piloting a vintage Mini Cooper as if it were a Porsche, director Doug Liman's master stroke is in getting an actor of deeply hidden talents to play to his weakness. (Rob Nelson)