The Bourne Identity (Widescreen Extended Edition)

Pretty simple. Excellent story, excellent actors (first I thought damon would be to tiny to fit but i had to admit that he fits the role pretty well), extremely well filmed. The sequels gets better (wich is rare enough to be stressed!).

HD DVD quality is excellent and allows u to rediscover the movie, specially the audio which is very good. Video is a bit under but only because the movie is past over ten years now!!

A must have

This item will not play on our new Sony HD DVD player and will be returned for credit. Very unhappy.

****1/2

I am late getting on the "Bourne" bandwagon. I just watched the first two films in the series for the first time last weekend after years of avoiding them. My impression? That so far, the "Bourne" films deserve all of the praise and success that they've received.

"The Bourne Identity" manages to take a story with a myriad of cliches (the super spy, the spy with amnesia, secret government experiments and cover-ups, etc, etc, etc) and still make a film that's fresh, exciting, intelligent and engrossing.

So the question is, why does this film excel when so many other action films fall flat? First, the film utilizes an excellent cast. Matt Damon as Jason Bourne is the thinking man's action hero, bringing a complexity to the role that flies in the face of the typical cocky, wisecracking American action hero. Veteran actors like Chris Cooper and Brian Cox bring gravitas to their supporting roles, and Franka Potente brings an international, quirky sex appeal to her role as Jason's love interest.

As great as the performers are, the script and direction also really deliver. Although the action scenes are all wonderfully executed, the film makes sure not to sacrifice character development either. Jason Bourne is a man who has lost his identity, and as a result is able to regain the humanity he has clearly lost in his previous life as an assassin.

This movie will keep you on the edge of your seat. I never thought of Matt Damon as an "action hero" type until I saw this movie. It just keeps getting better with the sequels.

As far as a shoot-um-up with the obligatory car chase goes, this movie did it quite well. And like many of the other "1984" (book by George Orwell in which to satisfy the proletariat they had a machine mass produce formula pulp fiction) type machine churned out films for the proletariat, the title and a few names bare the only resemblance to the Ludlum story. Quite a few of the characters that give this story depth and mystery are left out of the movie completely.

Fortunately or unfortunately it is easy to get wrapped unpin technology as assume that high definition (HD) or even 3D is going to take the place of Carlos and the search for his real identity.


Now let's not compare this quickie in shoot-up land with the well thought out book "The Bourne Identity" by Robert Ludlum or the much better portrait of the story portrayed in the Mini-Series "The Bourne Identity" (1988) starring Richard Chamberlain and Jaclyn Smith; then we can enjoy what is left.

A sailor on a fishing trawler spots a human body in the water. After retrieving it we find it is alive. Helping this stranger back from the near dead we find a couple of bullet holes and a mysterious capsule under his skin. The capsule displays what the fisherman recognizes immediately as a Swiss bank account. The man can not remember who he is. Now we follow along with his journey to Switzerland and find out if he will recover. In the mean time someone is out to kill him. Why?

The Bourne Identity (TV Miniseries)