Bourne Identity :

The novel Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum is one of my all time favourites, when reading the book I had goose pimples it was that good! Everybody in school back then had read this book and they all loved it! So you can imagine that this was a film I had waited eagerly to view. The film is very good not an all time great but still very good, no film could convey all the complexity of the book and luckily they did not even try to, instead they went for the core idea of the book and succeeded in translating it to the big screen.

I would have normally have given this film a rating of seven over ten but it gets an extra one for the fact that my language (Yoruba) is spoken in the movie!

My movie rating is : 8/10

Synopsis: A man is dragged from the sea with bullet wounds, he does not remember anything, not his name, nothing of his past including how he came to be shot. The one thing that becomes very clear is that he's being hunted by some deadly people but when his reflexes kick in he seems to be deadlier than all of them put together! The more he finds out about himself the less he likes it.

Positives :

1. Matt Damon conveys the helplessness of someone with no memory so well. He has this innocent boy look that makes it all the more shocking when he goes into assassin mode.

2. The action scenes in this movie were topnotch seeing Matt Damon kick ass as Jason Bourne was great. I thought at first that Matt would not be a convincing action star but boy did he prove me wrong! You have to see the Paris apartment fight scene, excellente mondo!

3. There is a great car chase in the movie through the streets of Paris that is highly reminiscent of the Italian Job, I did not know that a mini could handle so well.

4. One of my favourite actors, Adewale Agbaje is in this movie and he is a hoot! He is mostly know for his portrayal of Adebisi in the HBO series Oz. In the Bourne Identity he plays an exiled African dictator who is under threat.

5. I liked the way the director shot the film it had a kind of unique feel especially the camera work.

Negatives :

1. There is a totally unnecessary love interest in the movie that is totally unconvincing, her motives were at best unbelievable.

2. I wished there was more fight scenes especially with the assassins sent to take him out. The scene where he fights an assassin in a Paris apartment only whets your appetite for more of the same or maybe I am just being greedy.

3. The sound was pumping throughout and I actually left the movie with a headache!

4. The pointless role of Julia Stiles what was up with that? All she did all film long was push buttons and look solemn!

This is the second adaptation of this novel and I have to find the first effort to see if it is any good. The bottom line is that this is an action film that delivers. It looks like Matt Damon can kick Ben Afflecks butt! Why is Matt not playing Daredevil instead of Ben?

See ya later,

Shazam!