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The Bourne Identity (Full Screen Collector's Edition)

The Bourne Identity (Full Screen Collector's Edition)

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Pretty good
Review: Saw this today, and it was pretty good. As long as you don't compare it with the book. It doesn't match the book for excitement or plot, but it's not bad. This is what the movie had in common with the book: Jason Bourne, amnesia, love interest, guns. This movie would make a good book in its' own right, but not like the original.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Pleasant ride
Review: I hadn't read the book so I had no expections except that Lublum is known for telling a good yarn. The movie was pretty quickly paced.
I realized about half way through the movie that it was shot entirely in Europe with simple inserted exterior shots of D. C. area locates. It isn't a kid's film but I was glad that there wasn't overloaded with excessive violence and sex that some filmmakers use to pump up an otherwise weak film.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Expect the Un-Expected
Review: "The Bourne Identity," a fine bit of spy-thriller escapism loosely based on a 1980 best-seller by Robert Ludlum, opens with an unconscious Matt Damon, two bullets in his back, being plucked out of some rough waters off the coast of Marseilles by a fishing boat. It turns out he has no idea who he is - or what a small capsule carrying a Swiss bank-account number was doing implanted in his butt.

However, his body remembers. Making his way to Zurich to check out his only clue, he discovers he's a multilingual martial-arts expert. Which means ... what? The safety-deposit box he finds only confuses things. In it are a handful of passports under different names, a pile of money in various currencies and a gun.

Meanwhile, we learn that Bourne is some kind of CIA operative from an off-the-books mission gone awry. His boss (Chris Cooper, the rigid neighbor from "American Beauty") now wants him dead. So the chase begins, with Bourne's only help coming from a young German woman named Maria (Franka Potente). She's got a car and a venturesome spirit, but the more they find out about his former self, the less either of them likes it.

The movie has all those welcome spy-movie accoutrements: a train speeding through a snow-covered tunnel, some sinewy cat-and-mouse games in Paris, topped off by an A-plus car chase, even a chilling spy vs. spy confrontation in the French countryside with an agent known as the Professor ("Croupier's" Clive Owen).

That said, the film's greatest asset is how much it's not just another connect-the-dots, spy-on-the-run picture. Director Doug Liman, best known for "Swingers," not only treats his story with intelligence, but he makes some refreshingly off-beat choices. For one, he casts lovely Julia Stiles as a Paris go-fer for the CIA. In a more conventional movie, she would've played Potente's role.

Damon isn't a typical hero either. His boyishness brings a different slant to the role. One of the movie's more winning aspects is watching Damon watch himself as he discovers all the things he somehow knows how to do (at times, it suggests Tobey Maguire's wonder when he first tries out his powers in "Spider-Man"). In one amusing scene at a diner, within five minutes of being seated, Damon tells Potente that the waitress is left-handed; the guy at the counter may be fat but he knows how to handle himself; and the likeliest place to find a gun, if needed, is in the glove compartment of the truck outside. Not only doesn't he know how he knows these things; he can't imagine why he would know them.

Potente, who first turned critics' heads in the German film, "Run Lola Run," is becoming an intriguing presence in American movies. She suggests Lili Taylor with a sexier edge, yet she has a grounded kind of beauty that makes her credible. As a bonus, she brings a European quality to her role that somehow seeps into the rest of Liman's film.

She's not precisely what we expect. Neither is Damon. Neither is "The Bourne Identity."

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good movie, but a little disappointing
Review: I haven't read the book, I have only read the third part. But the whole ludlum-idea behind Jason Bourne, Delta one from Medusa, trained to take out Carlos, isn't in the movie. The same for Carlos himself, no Carlos in the movie. And that very essential part is something I really missed and certainly devalues the movie as a whole. For those who didn't read the book(s) a great movie. But when you did read the book(s), it's disappointing.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Bourne Conspiracy
Review: Okay, I'm writing this because I feel that I've been burned. I just purchased the 2004(?) re-release of this DVD and I was very disappointed. The package describes an "explosive extended edition" and "includes an all-new beginning and ending". I've got to admit that I loved the movie when it was in the theatres, and am happy that it is now in my collection, but I never would have bought it had I known the hype was so lame. The 'explosive' new beginning and ending were NOT, and really add nothing to the movie (I won't 'spoil' the 'surprise' for those die-hard fans). Plus they couch the reasons for excluding them from the theatrical release in some 9/11 mumbo-jumbo that was not clearly defined enough to understand. I think it's just a marketing ploy. If you're looking for a major addition to the original in this new release...please say, "I wasn't Bourne yesterday!"

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Smart plot,baaaad characters...
Review: This movie feautures a very smart plot,supported by a talented director,but is ruined by the really bad characters.You can't understand how they think,and worst of all,you can't like them.Especially Bourne.I mean,what's up with the guy?He's the ''good guy'',but he's always angry,shaking innoccent people just because things are not like he wants them to me.I've seen ''anti-heroes'' in films before,but not in action films,and not like that!He even bumps his girlfriend's back on the door at some point!
Sorry Liman,but my opinion is that if the characters are bad,so is the film.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Bourne Identity
Review: The Bourne Identity is a great spy thriller. Keeps you guessing & on the edge of your seat. Matt Damon is perfect as Jason Bourne. Damon pulls off a character that is smart but lost, composed but confused, lethal but child like. From the minute the fishermen fished him out of the Mediteranian Sea & finds out he can't recall who he is. Then finding out thru a capsule implanted in his body...only a bank account in Zurich. Once Bourne gets to the Bank of Zurich all hell breaks loose. Franka Potente as Maria, the German gypsie, is very good. This movie is an excellent action spy thriller that I would recomend to all to see.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Enticing
Review: This is a movie I can watch at least once a month, if not more, and still become engrossed in the story. The action, the chemistry, the plot, the scenery combine to make this a classic movie in its genre.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Movie great! DVD Explosive editiion!!! NOT SO MUCH
Review: I have been a fan of this movie since it first came out, so when they annouced a new EXPLOSIVE EXTENDED EDITION, I got real excited and couldn't wait to own it, now I do, and guess what? Really, really desapointed in this dvd.

The movie is still great of course, but the EXTENDED version is nothing to brag about... first of all, the actual deleted scenes which you can access on the special features menu of the original dvd and this version dvd, are not included in the EXTENDED VERSION... and the only 2 clips that are added, are a new begining and alternate ending. These last two new clips need to be accesed by pressing an icon which appears while the movie is playing, and the switch is cheaply done; lacking the original movies quality...

It would have been nice if the Extended version would have been made up without the PRESS THE ICON feature, and WHAT do they mean by EXPLOSIVE???? The only excitement and action is in the original movie.... nothing else.

This is a real rip off in my opinion. If you own the old version; stick with it... this new version is REALLY NOT WORTH IT!!!!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Cool haircut!
Review: Exciting film. Especially loved the scene where Matt Damon must color and cut his girlfriend's hair, to disguise her appearance. He hacks away with a pair of kitchen scissors and she winds up looking like something from the pages of Vogue. Then they make love, to celebrate her new look. What a man! He speaks ten languages, knows all kinds of spooky martial arts moves, lives in a fab Paris apartment with a kitchen full of awesome appliances, AND he can style hair. What are they teaching government assassins these days?! And where can I meet one?

Julia Stiles doesn't do much in this film except stand around looking pouty, because she didn't get any haircut at all.


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