Rating: 
Summary: Action Galore
Review: This isn't high art, but it's not intended to be high art. It is Action, Action, Action! Nonstop mayhem in this film. There is literaly never a dull moment. The car chase is the best I've seen since Bullitt and The French Connection.You do have to overlook a few things: How can a guy with 2 bullet holes in his back do heavy labor, chin ups, and acrobatics? How come his clothes are so neat and clean after sleeping on the street, and he doesn't need a shave? One thing I would change is the ending. It is way too Hollywoodish. It would have been much better with some sort of twist at the end.
Rating:
Summary: It wasn't a bad movie
Review: Those kids from Good Will Hunting are really growing up. Now that they have grown up they want to go from the cerebral to the action oriented in one bound. Right now you could go to the theater and find Ben Affleck playing a C.I.A. Analyst in The Sum of All Fears or you could check out the adaptation of Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity with Matt Damon as the lead. I can't speak for the latter but you might want to wait and rent this one.
Matt Damon plays the title role of Jason Borne. Borne has a lot of special talents unfortunately he has to learn about them one at a time because, well, he has lost his memory. It seems that he was pulled out of the ocean with two bullets in him as well as a nice little micro-chip. The men on this ship thought he was dead but much to their surprise he is still alive and after some quick surgery, healing rather rapidly. He doesn't know who he is or how he came to be in the ocean. He does know that he seems to speak multiple languages fluently and that this chip is leading him to an address of a bank in Zurich.
After getting to this bank, the man discovers that he appears to have multiple identities of which Jason Borne seems the most comfortable. He also has quite a bit of cash, some weapons, and after being attacked...a good deal of fighting skills he was unaware of possessing. Borne is forced on the run to discover his identity. Unfortunately the longer he is on the run, the more people with similar skills pop up trying to kill him. It seems that a major governmental agency is not happy having supposedly dead agents reappear without contacting them.
First off I must admit that I have never read the original book so I cannot comment as to how accurate an adaptation this movie is. That being said, I will state this is a very uneven movie. The action sequences are first rate and engrossing. The speed of them can keep you riveted on the edge of your seat. That's the good news.
The bad news is that the rest of the movie moves as a snails pace and doesn't sustain the suspense in the slightest. If anything the middle sequences slow the movie considerably. Also, the movie doesn't seem to go anywhere. The beginning makes some sense for story purposes but the end just happens with no particular climactic moment. One minute the movie is going along and the next...it just stops dead in its tracks. It almost leaves you wanting more with the earnest hope that something else will happen to explain the movie.
Matt Damon does do a good job in the title role. He is very believable as someone who has lost all touch with himself and suddenly finds people all converging with his face in their scope. He is pretty phenomenal in the action sequences and they were quite surprising in their ferocity. This movie is full of action but make no mistake, it is definitely PG-13 oriented as most of it is bloodless.
Most of the rest of the actors have meaningless characters and could have been done by anyone. Character actor Chris Cooper, Lone Star and The Patriot, is wasted as the "villain" and Julia Stiles, Save the Last Dance, is almost non-existent in her role.
Did I hate the movie? Not particularly but I was not totally entertained. It had some great moments but they were few and far between.
Rating:
Summary: The Bourne Misstep
Review: It can be quite disappointing when an actor with screenwriter's talent gets himself tangled up in a genre picture. Even more disappointing is when said genre picture proclaims itself to be a suspense thriller but turns out to be little more than a punch-and-kick actioner. With "The Bourne Identity", little Matty Damon grows up, and it turns out that he has a little Steven Seagal in him. That's not to say that "The Bourne Identity" is nothing more than schlocky summer fare. It can be, at times, quite engaging and provoking. It's premise -- CIA-trained super-assassin on the run from his former bosses, hampered by severe amnesia -- has a lot of potential for questioning the archetypal hero's persona, and tackling issues of identity. It further proves the notion, also espoused by "Fargo" and "Insomnia", that the limited palette of beautiful snowy locales (Switzerland and France here) can be an intense and impressive backdrop for a thriller. And it has a stab at the one storytelling device that I'm a sucker for every time: the unreliable narrator. Damon, plays Jason Bourne, a character that is cold and calculating, but ever ready to spin himself out of his shell and knock the baddies around. Some of the movie's best psychological moments actually come in these action scenes. Bourne doesn't know a thing about his previous life, and seeing him realize that he's a lethal fighting machine, right at the moment when he needs it most, is quite thrilling. Damon does a fine job in these scenes, pulling off both the tormented hero and athletic wunderkind portions of his character. However, I would have liked to see him inject some more humour into the role. The opportunities were surely there. He plays paranoid and coiled the whole time, and after awhile it got grating. One of the film's fatal flaws is that casts, and then wastes, a heap of wonderful actors. Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, and Julia Stiles, all actors who've proven time and again that they can deliver interesting and complex performances, are asked to play mere plot devices here. Cooper is the go-for-broke assassin team leader. Cox is the worrisome bureaucrat. Stiles is the prodigious tech-op. None plays anything resembling a full-fledged character, although all are game in their attempts to flesh one out. Most disturbing is the work turned in by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. He was always terrifying on HBO's "Oz" (as gang leader Adebisi). But here he is terribly over the top and ludicrous as a recently deposed African dictator. So much so that the friend with whom I saw the film leaned over to me, after Adewale's first appearance, and asked if we'd accidentally paid to see "Coming to America 2". The one supporting actor who fulfills his/her role nicely is the thinking man's uber-babe, Franka Potente. The star of "Run Lola Run" plays Marie, who in the hands of a lesser actress would have been little more than a cipher of a love interest. But Potente injects her with tenderness and vulnerability, while also being sexier than I've ever seen her. She and Damon have a few truncated love scenes, and what they share together is always sensual, without ever being blatant. Director Doug Liman, whose work I admired in "Swingers" and found problematic in "Go", two movies more concerened with clever dialogue than swift fists, would seem an unlikely fit for a spy thriller. But he does his best to lay back and let the story take shape. The opening scene is played almost perfectly, giving the audience as little information as possible, but still allowing them to figure out that the floating body found by fisherman just off Marseilles has an even more terrible story to tell than first expected. His camera work, for the most part, manages to capture the stunning and stark beauty of his locales. Unfortunately Liman also, at times, feels the need to play with his new big-budget toys. So we get a lot of flashy digital information flittering its way across the computer screen. There's nothing more effective at taking the audience out of a visceral action sequence. And during the lesser of those action sequences, Liman shows that he too has a bit of Steven Seagal in him (one such sequence has a quick succession of limbs bending in directions they weren't designed to go). Alas, his editing and choice of close-ups sometimes caused problems: is that Bourne's leg being broken, or the operative sent to kill him? It got quite confusing at times. In the end, Bourne degenerates from being a perfect, but still humanly flawed, killing machine, to a capital-A, capital-H Action Hero. Which is far from Damon or Liman's strengths. I suspect that their instincts should have provided some room for doubt, but the audience never gets the impression that Bourne is in any real danger. So a film that is still better than your average cookie-cutter spy picture becomes a minor disappointment for all the potential it wastes.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth Seeing
Review: I saw this today and thought it was an excellent movie when considered on it's own. I also read the book (one of my favorites by Ludlum,) and the movie doesn't follow that very closely. By the end of the movie I was still asking myself who he was supposed to be. (I know from the book, but don't recall it being mentioned in the movie.) I guess that could be material for a sequel if this one does well. So much was left out, but then this was a long book. When I just consider the movie without comparing it to the book, I thought it was quite good. My sister agreed, and said she was impressed with it. I would definitely say it is worth seeing. It is a violent movie - not for the kids - but I fully enjoyed it.
Rating: 
Summary: The Right Formula: Matt Damon and the Mediterrranean
Review: This is a very serviceable thriller with few surprises but for one: Franka Potente is a real charmer and her chemistry with Damon is palpable. The action sequences are well-directed and edited,especially the famous car chase through the narrow streets of Paris. The European (mostly French) locations are georgeous. And of course, Matt Damon and the Mediterranean always make a winning combination ! Just good fun, nothing more, nothing less.
Rating:
Summary: A really great movie
Review: This is the best movie I've seen for a while. With all of the really [junky] movies that have come out recently, I was really glad to have finally found a good one. The Bourne Identity was intense and it kept me on the edge of my seat. I've seen it twice already and I'm planning to buy it on DVD. Matt Damon and his co-star were a great pair, and I felt that Damon's performance was unusually convincing and interesting. If you've been trying to decide which movie to go to, don't see Scooby Doo or undercover brother (though that was pretty funny), see the Bourne identity. If you've already seen the Bourne Identity, give The Sum of All Fears a try--thet was pretty good as well.
Rating:
Summary: The Bourne Identity
Review: We saw this film at the Friday night opening joined by a sold out crowd. The film was continously entertaining, never slow and has an Outstanding auto chase scene. The placement of what appears to be an older Mini-Cooper for the chase should help further boost sales of the new version. One characteristic of this film is the significant absence of crude language and nudity. (The only swearing we recall was in German) The violent aspects of the movie might be good to keep from children, but the director accomplished a very entertaining movie without two of the three almost formula ingredients. The loose ends are pretty neatly wrapped up at the end and the only lacking in the film is the absence of any detectable passion between Matt Damon and his female counterpart. My wife came away from the film suspecting Matt probably would have perferred a male romantic counterpart. But, this lack of passion did not detract from the pure entertainment the movie provided. An interesting plot, well acted and very worth seeing on a big screen for the action and chase scenes. We enjoyed it.
Rating:
Summary: Delivers Action
Review: This movie delivers exactly what it promises. A solid plot and lots of action. It is update remake of the Richard Chamberlin movie of the same name from some 20+ years ago and doesn't stray too far from the original movie or the book of the same name. An excellent entre for Matt Damon into the action flix genre - he shows a strong upper body and good mastery of movie "kung fu". Not a great "film" but a summer fun movie.
Rating:
Summary: One Thumb Up.
Review: If you like car chase scenes, this movie has a good one. But car chase scenes alone do not a great motion picture, make. I don't think the script challenged the actors but because the story is told primarily through the eyes of Jason Bourne, a man suffering from amensia, I stayed interesting in the story. I, along with Jason, kept wondering what had happened to him and what would happen to him. I feel the producers missed an opportunity when they decided not to incorporate Carlos, the world's most dangerous assassin, from the book, into the storyline. He would have, at least, been an interesting character to follow. Otherwise we had just a man and a woman running around Europe having a gratuitous sex scene but mostly trying to stay one jump ahead of those badboys from the CIA. "The Bourne Identity" was a decent action film and I would recommend it. But it was not as good as "The Sum of all Fears" or "Star Wars: The Attack of the Clones". Certainly better than last weeks "Bad Company". I had a choice between this film and "Wind-talkers". I now wish I had chosen the later. Cammy Diaz A @ L
Rating:
Summary: Summer Spies
Review: The movies have been so bad this year that it's good to have fun at the movies again. Not that there aren't silly moments in this derivative spy movie, but the European locations and some of my favorite actors (Franka Potente, who has blossomed into a really beautiful woman, Julia Stiles, and Chris Cooper) make this one fun throughout.
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