Reviewed Five Ways: The Bourne Identity

I just saw The Bourne Identity, and here it is reviewed five ways:

1. I have a strange relationship with The Bourne Identity which dates back to childhood. I watched it on TV some time in my youth (probably 1988, when I was 14 and it was on TV), but never caught the title. I didn’t watch all of it, but had a distinct memory from the beginning, where Bourne washes up in a small fishing village with amnesia. I had no idea where it was from, but, for some reason, that memory stuck with me. About twelve years later, I wrote this monologue while doing some character research for a play I was writing. After writing the monologue, I sent it to a few friends. One of them correctly identified its source. Clearly, I’ve mistaken Michael Caine for Richard Chamberlain (not an impossible thing to do). Dissapointingly, the new movie doesn’t include this scene:

   This is my big thrill this week. Getting a new stapler. My old one broke. Well, I broke it.  More specifically, I lost the little spring that keeps the staples all tidy and neat. I was just bored one day…like every day…and so I kind of took the whole thing apart. The whole thing. I even used the corner of my business card holder to unscrew the little pad, the little metal trough thingy that catches the staples and bends the little staple’s arms. Folds them in. I had it all spread out on my desk, like a pistol or something. It reminded me of a film, I think it had Michael Caine in it. This guy, perhaps Michael Caine, washes up on a beach somewhere, in some little fishing village. He’s got no memory. Can’t remember for the life of him where he’s been or who he is. Complete…what do you call it? Amnesia. This guy, perhaps Michael Caine, he’s got amnesia. Anyway, this army veteran, this clever old retired fisherman slash army veteran, he figures out that Mr. Caine is, in fact, a spy or assassin of some kind. Michael can’t believe it. So, what this veteran does is, he takes his old Colt .45, this automatic pistol and sort of, like, hucks it at Michael Caine and says, he yells, ‘Break it down, now. Break it down.’ All commanding like.  Sure enough, Michael does it. Fast. Boom, boom, boom, he’s done, it’s in all in pieces. He looks up at the old guy and says, ‘How did I know how to do that?’ Anyway, that’s what my stapler was like, all laid out like surgical tools. So I think, I’ve had this stapler since I started here, what, like eighteen months ago. I deserve a new stapler. But what am I going to do, go to the receptionist, ‘excuse me, I need a new stapler, my old one is getting kind of, I don’t know, dull. Could you set me up?’ So I lost the spring. Chucked it in the garbage, actually.

   Now, I think, now I can get a new stapler. You’d me amazed at how many different kinds of staplers there are out there. I looked at the catalog. Metal, plastic, all these colours. And shapes! So many shapes-rounded corners, flat tops for better torque, broader bases. I looked for them, but I didn’t see those school staplers. Do you know the ones I mean? They were grey. Grey like battleship grey. Like, when you think of grey, you think of these staplers. And you loaded them from the front. That was their…uh…their defining feature. They were front loaders. Which was no better or worse than the flip top jobs. Just different. You loaded them from the front and they made this great, satisfying, sort of chunky click when you closed and you were ready to staple. Do you know these?

   Eventually I narrowed down my choice to this one nice forest green stapler. It had these neat little nubs on the head, that sort of reminded me of condoms-‘for her pleasure’-or those little bumps between the up and the down elevator. Do you know those? Anyway, it’s coming in with the next stationery shipment. My new stapler.

   I searched the Net, and found (CAUTION: This is a lengthy review of the film and includes spoilers! Read at your own risk) a reference to the scene I describe here.

2. It’s kind of disturbing to watch Matt Damon on screen because of his striking resemblance to my brother. Everyone who knows him agrees. To compare their photos, there’s only a passing resemblance:

   

   Often a person in a photo is distinctly different from their real-life appearance, and this is part of the case here. They share a similar set of mannerisms, so it’s always a mad when Mr. Damon’s up on the big screen.

3. There’s an interesting thing about remaking older films and novels these days, particularly those from, say, post-World War II America. The one core element of filmmaking that has changed dramatically in the fifty years (and it’s not surprising, given the youth of the art form) is plot. Plots from two or three decades ago often seem pretty straight forward in comparison to the likes of Pulp Fiction or The Usual Suspects. The recent remake of The Thomas Crown Affair is one example, and The Bourne Identity is another.
4. I hate to sound like some kind of Las Vegas high roller, but Franka Potente is money. I’ve been a fan since Run Lola Run, and she provides an effective (not to mention fetching) love interest for Matt Damon in The Bourne Identity.
5. Just as Saving Private Ryan raised the bar for battle scenes, I think Ronin did the same for car chases. There’s a long chase (in tiny cars) through Nice that is an homage to stunt driving. There’s a similar race through Paris in The Bourne Identity which comes close, which is high praise indeed.