[With Jason Bourne set to open this Friday, we’ll be taking a look back at the original Bourne trilogy. These reviews will contain spoilers since the movies have been out for years.]
In the years following his breakthrough success with Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon‘s career had hit a snag. He was a talented actor who had made a series of bad choices in terms of leading roles. Furthermore, he had never taken on the role of an action hero, but Universal took a chance on the actor, and had him star in the thriller The Bourne Identity. Director Doug Liman has also never done an action film before, and had made his name on the indie features Swingers and Go. Strangely, neither the director nor his star does a particularly great job with the film, but it was a hit and led to two excellent features once Paul Greengrass took over the franchise. I didn’t care much for The Bourne Identity when I saw it back when it was released in 2002. I hadn’t revisited the movie until today, and unfortunately, it still has a lot of problems. Thankfully, these problems then serve to illustrate what makes the character work and separates him from other action heroes.
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