The Bourne Identity
An American in Paris
The scene I liked in The Bourne Identity is a very American scene, one of the few in this aggressively Euro-centric movie. Matt Damon is standing in a train station; it has a big billboard marking arrival and departure times, like you would see at a large airport. Damon does what travelers do; he stares at the billboard for a moment, looking at the destinations. Amsterdam. Antwerp. Madrid. But he’s not looking to catch a train, or pick someone up; he’s only there to drop off a mysterious red bag in a locker and get back in his car. He’s looking at all the places he could go, all the places he would rather go, everywhere except for the one place he has to go. And just as the airline traveler who would rather go to San Francisco or Miami sighs, shoulders his bags, and gets on his assigned plane for Charlotte or Cleveland, Damon turns away and gets back in his car and drives off. (Unlike most people, though, he is swiftly chased by the French police.)
Matt Damon is best at playing brainy types that are a little overwhelmed by the world around them. Will Hunting is the most extreme example; a brilliant mathematician who retreats from his genius into a familiar world of bars and construction jobs. Mike McDermott from the underrated Rounders is a savvy cardsharp who is out of his depth in law school and in the seedy poker parlors of New York. Rudy Baylor from The Rainmaker is a smart, hustling law student who scuffles his way through a medical malpractice case. Tom Ripley is a bright but socially inept young man whose coping skills, unfortunately, include the odd murder here and there. (The reverse of this pattern also applies, with Damon playing confident lunkheads like Private Ryan, the apprentice thief from Ocean’s Eleven and Loki the angel from Dogma.)
The Bourne Identity presents Damon with a typical role. Damon plays Jason Bourne, a phenomenally well-trained CIA assassin, skilled in foreign languages and unarmed combat. After a botched assignment, he is found floating in the Mediterranean Sea by a beat-up fishing boat. He has no memory of who he is or why he was there, and no clues to help him except two bullet holes in his back, a really ugly brown cable-knit sweater, and a mysterious capsule implanted in his hip.
We know Bourne is bright, because he’s, well, Matt Damon. And he is capable, but completely clueless about his identity and why all these people are chasing after him. Bourne knows all the license plate numbers of all the cars in all of the little roadside diners in France, but he doesn’t fully comprehend that returning to his bank in Switzerland or his apartment in Paris makes him a target. This makes him vulnerable, especially to gypsy maiden Franka Potente, who he bribes to give him a ride to Paris. Fortunately, this vulnerability does not extend to his martial arts and unarmed combat skills, which carry him through a number of unpleasant encounters with strangers sent to kill him.
There isn’t much to The Bourne Identity, it’s just an attractive couple on the run from fearsome killers for reasons that cannot be explained very easily. It’s interesting for a couple of reasons outside of just the natural summertime impulse to get in out of the heat. (Which is hard to do in Midtown Atlanta, the air-conditioning is still out at two of the theaters of the Midtown 8.) First, there is Doug Liman, the director here, and he is always a treat to watch. Mostly, he is not afraid to let a little incidental humor creep in once in awhile. This is what made Go such a fun ride, and it works here, too. Damon is pretty humorless, but Potente adds a lot of charm. She’s not just The Girl, she’s along at first because she knows a good thing when she sees it, and she doesn’t buy into all the cloak-and-dagger stuff. One of the fun scenes of the movie involves her covert attempt to get some documents from a stuffy Paris hotel; watch Damon’s reaction when she tells him how she did it. (The rest of the supporting cast is pretty good, too, especially Brian Cox as a befuddled CIA executive, and Chris Cooper — the colonel from American Beauty as the hard-nosed CIA enforcer.)
But the real fun here involves Damon as an American in Paris. The best scene in the movie is the most celebrated, a hybrid American-style car chase scene with tiny little European cars. (Note to Europeans: American police officers drive great big V-8 Crown Victorias; you wouldn’t get ten feet in a car chase in America with the beat-up Austin Mini that Jason Bourne drives here.) It’s a lot of fun to watch, but the underlying subtext is just as interesting. Add to this the moral confusion that amnesiac Damon feels, with his CIA assassin’s instincts conflicting with his innate American innocense, his sense of what is right. All the assassins chasing him are ruthless, world-weary European types, except for Cooper (and the silently wholesome-yet-mysterious Julia Stiles, who says maybe ten words in the whole movie.) Damon, however, remains as optimistic and hopeful and resourceful as the situation allows, caring for children and dogs, in the best tradition of the American serviceman overseas.
At the end of the day, though, the moviegoer stands in line at the ticket counter the same way the passenger stands in the airport terminal, looking at the different choices, trying to decide which direction to go. The Bourne Identity is not a bad choice here, assuming that you’ve already seen Spider-Man and The Sum of All Fears and, most importantly, the air-conditioning in the theater is working properly.