The Bourne Identity gives the action genre the kick in the ass it needs
A story about a guy who wakes up with no recollection about who he is or where he’s been but possesses skills of an assassin. Basically, the story of my college days.
This is a great concept for a movie and just as good in the execution of it. A trained assassin, as we’d learn later, wakes up with a couple bullets in his back and a safety deposit box number in his hip on a Russian (or close enough) fishing boat. He has the instincts of an assassin, but doesn’t know who he’s after, who is after him or who he is. Sound familiar? Replace “trained assassin” with “intramural badminton champion,” “bullets in his back” with “wristbands from bars,” “safety deposit box number” with “receipt from Pita Pit,” and “Russian fishing boat” with “the floor” and it’s every weekend at Miami University. See?
He then spends the next hour and a half trying to figure out who he is while evading people who don’t like him and getting mixed up with a girl only to discover he used to be a bad guy but had a change of heart. I know. It’s uncanny.
I can certainly nitpick a detail here and there, such as the sounds from the combat scenes sounding like a Double Dragon video game, but this is everything an action movie should be. In the end, when we found out his past, the movie did a good job of making sure we saw a change of heart in him before he got shot, so we could truly feel for the character. Sure, it gives us the whole “good guys and bad guys” routine, but it’s few and far between that have the guts to give us that pill.
8 bugs/10
Dustin Fisher
Dustin Fisher
