Taglines: He was the perfect weapon until he became the target.
The Bourne Identity movie storyline. On a stormy night, a young man is pulled out of the Mediterranean Sea by the crew of a fishing boat. Thinking the young man is dead, a curious fisherman with a scalpel finds two bullets in his back and a miniature laser device in his hip. The laser reveals a Swiss bank account number. But our wet hero isn’t dead, and soon finds himself in Zurich. In the bank vault the young man discovers his name, Jason Bourne.
In addition, he finds a baffling pile of different passports, all with his picture, and a huge pile of cash. In the U.S. Embassy, Jason Bourne discovers his love interest and travel partner, Marie, along with the fact that someone wants to kill him. Armed with a bag of money and mysterious martial arts skills, with Marie by his side, Bourne scours Paris for clues about his identity and past life… and finds himself in the middle of two assassination plots masterminded by the CIA.
The Bourne Identity is a 2002 action spy thriller film based on Robert Ludlum’s novel of the same name. It stars Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, a man suffering from extreme memory loss and attempting to discover his true identity amidst a clandestine conspiracy within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The film also features Franka Potente, Chris Cooper, Clive Owen, Julia Stiles, Brian Cox and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. The first in the Jason Bourne film series, it was followed by The Bourne Supremacy (2004), The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), The Bourne Legacy (2012) and Jason Bourne (2016).
The film was co-produced and directed by Doug Liman and adapted for the screen by Tony Gilroy and William Blake Herron. Although Robert Ludlum died in 2001, he is credited as an executive producer alongside Frank Marshall. Universal Pictures released the film to theatres in the United States on June 14, 2002, and it received a positive critical and public reaction.
About the Production
Filming began October 2000. From the onset of filming, difficulties with the studio slowed the film’s development and caused a rift between the director and Universal Pictures, as executives were unhappy with the film’s pacing, emphasis on small scale action sequences, and the general relationship between themselves and Liman, who was suspicious of direct studio involvement.
A number of reshoots and rewrites late in development, plus scheduling problems, delayed the film from its original release target date of September 2001 to June 2002 and took it $8,000,000 over budget from the initial budget of $60 million; screenwriter Tony Gilroy faxed elements of screenplay rewrites almost throughout the entire duration of filming.
A particular point of contention with regard to the original Gilroy script were the scenes set in the farmhouse near the film’s conclusion. Liman and Matt Damon fought to keep the scenes in the film after they were excised in a third-act rewrite that was insisted upon by the studio. Liman and Damon argued that, though the scenes were low key, they were integral to the audience’s understanding of the Bourne character and the film’s central themes. The farmhouse sequence consequently went through many rewrites from its original incarnation before its inclusion in the final product.
Other issues included the studio’s desire to substitute Montreal or Prague for Paris in order to lower costs, Liman’s insistence on the use of a French-speaking film crew, and poor test audience reactions to the film’s Paris finale. The latter required a late return to location in order to shoot a new, more action-oriented conclusion to the Paris story arc.
In addition to Paris, filming took place in Prague, Imperia, Rome, Mykonos, and Zürich; several scenes set in Zürich were also filmed in Prague. Damon described the production as a struggle, citing the early conflicts that he and Liman had with the studio, but denied that it was an overtly difficult process, stating, “When I hear people saying that the production was a nightmare it’s like, a ‘nightmare’? Shooting’s always hard, but we finished.”
Liman’s directorial method was often hands-on. Many times he operated the camera himself in order to create what he believed was a more intimate relationship between himself, the material, and the actors. He felt that this connection was lost if he simply observed the recording on a monitor. This was a mindset he developed from his background as a small-scale indie film maker.
The acclaimed car chase sequence was filmed primarily by the second unit under director Alexander Witt. The unit shot in various locations around Paris while Liman was filming the main story arc elsewhere in the city. The finished footage was eventually edited together to create the illusion of a coherent journey. Liman confessed that “anyone who really knows Paris will find it illogical”, since few of the locations used in the car chase actually connect to each other. Liman took only a few of the shots himself; his most notable chase sequence shots were those of Matt Damon and Franka Potente while inside the car.
In its opening weekend, The Bourne Identity took in US$27,118,640 in 2,638 theaters. The film grossed $121,661,683 in North America and $92,263,424 elsewhere for a total worldwide gross of $214,034,224.
The Bourne Identity (2002)
Directed by: Doug Liman
Starring: Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, Chris Cooper, Franka Potente, Clive Owen, Gabriel Mann, Josh Namilton, Orso Maria Guerrini, Walton Goggins, Nicky Naudé
Screenplay by: Tony Gilroy, W. Blake Herron, Robert Ludlum (Kitap)
Production Design by: Dan Weil
Cinematography by: Oliver Wood
Film Editing by: Saar Klein
Costume Design by: Pierre-Yves Gayraud
Set Decoration by: Sandrine Mauvezin
Art Direction by: Laurent Piron, Bettina von den Steinen
Makeup Department: Jirí Farkas, Kay Georgiou
Music by: John Powell
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence and some language.
Distributed by: Universal Pictures
Release Date: June 14, 2002
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