#10- The Borne Identity (7 of 10)

You enjoy it while you're there, but once you've seen it, you've seen it -- you don't feel as though there are secrets and meanings tucked away in dark corners, as you do with a more artful thriller like Memento, but Memento immersed the audience in the hero's disorientation, while The Bourne Identity is just another thrill ride, though a reasonably well-crafted one.

The CIA wants to find Bourne, or kill him, or both. Bourne isn't sure which, so he flees to Paris, along with a German drifter named Marie.

Marie whom he entices with $10,000 and the promise of more gives the movie a badly needed shot of what-the-hell attitude, need to keep the film at least halfway believable. Terrified in moments of danger, Marie nonetheless gets it together enough to yell at an assassin, demanding to know where he got her picture.

The Bourne Identity doesn't bother much with the reality of what it might be like to discover gradually that one is, at the very least, a highly skilled government agent of some sort, or maybe worse. Borne is seems somewhat unbothered by his lightning reflexes and ninja skills.

It would have been nice if the story had been complex instead of just obscured until the end. As it was the whole thing was pretty predictable, and there was no real twist after the first 20 minutes.

The Bourne Identity does the job, but it's a very basic job; I can't work up a lot of respect for a movie that is essentially one guy beating up on everyone else for hour and a half only to learn what's going on in the last five minutes.