The Bourne Identity

The Bourne Identity is a 2005 American-German action 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 (2006), The Bourne Ultimatum (2008), 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.

Plot
In the Mediterranean Sea, Italian fishermen rescue an unconscious American (Matt Damon) floating adrift with two gunshot wounds in his back. They tend to his wounds, and when the man wakes, they find he suffers from dissociative amnesia. He has no memory of his own identity, while he retains his speech and finds himself capable of advanced combat skills and fluency in several languages. The skipper finds a tiny laser projector under the man's hip that, when activated, gives a number of a safe deposit box in Zürich. Upon landing in Imperia, Italy, the American heads to the bank in Switzerland to investigate the deposit box. He finds it contains a large sum of money in various currencies, numerous passports and identity cards with his picture on all of them, and a handgun. The man takes everything but the gun, and leaves, opting to use the name on the American passport, Jason Bourne.

After Bourne's departure, a bank employee contacts Operation Treadstone, a CIA black ops program. Treadstone's head, Alexander Conklin (Chris Cooper), activates three agents to take down Bourne—Castel (Nicky Naude), Manheim (Russell Levy), and the Professor (Clive Owen)—while also issuing alerts to local police to capture him. Meanwhile, CIA Deputy Director Ward Abbott (Brian Cox) contacts Conklin about a failed assassination attempt against exiled African dictator Nykwana Wombosi (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). Conklin promises Abbott that he will deal with the Treadstone agent who failed.

Bourne attempts to evade the Swiss police by using his U.S. passport to enter the American consulate, but he is caught by guards. He evades capture, and escapes the consulate, giving a German woman, Marie Kreutz (Franka Potente), $20,000 to drive him to an address in Paris listed on his French driving license. At the address, an apartment, he hits redial on the phone and reaches a hotel. He inquires about the names on his passports there, learning that a "John Michael Kane" had been registered but died two weeks prior in a car crash. Castel ambushes Bourne and Marie in Fragrant Gardens in a gunshot, but Bourne gets the upper hand. Instead of allowing himself to be interrogated, Castel throws himself out of a window to his death at the swimming pool, and raced along to the lift. Marie finds wanted posters of Bourne and herself, and after agonizing, agrees to continue to help Bourne. After a chase in which Bourne evades Paris police in Marie's car, the two fugitives spend the night together in a Paris hotel.

Meanwhile, Wombosi continues to obsess over the attempt on his life. Conklin, having anticipated this, planted a body in the Paris morgue to appear as the assailant, but Wombosi is not fooled and threatens to report this and other CIA secrets to the media. The Professor assassinates Wombosi on Conklin's orders. Bourne, posing as Kane, learns about Wombosi's yacht, and that the assailant had been shot twice in the back during the escape; he realizes that he was the assailant. He and Marie take refuge at the French countryside home of her old friend Eamon (Tim Dutton) and his children. Under pressure from Abbott to tie off the Wombosi matter entirely, Conklin tracks Bourne's location and sends the Professor there, but Bourne shoots him twice with Eamon's shotgun, mortally wounding him. The Professor reveals their shared connection to Treadstone before dying. Bourne sends Marie, Eamon, and Eamon's children away for their protection, and then contacts Conklin via the Professor's phone. Conklin agrees to meet Bourne, alone, in Paris. From a rooftop near the arranged location Bourne sees Conklin has not come alone, so he abandons the meeting, but uses the opportunity to place a tracking device on Conklin's car, leading Bourne to Treadstone's safe house in Paris.

Bourne breaks in and holds Conklin and logistics technician Nicolette "Nicky" Parsons (Julia Stiles) at gunpoint. When Conklin begins pressing him to remember his past, Bourne recalls his attempt to assassinate Wombosi through successive flashbacks. As Kane, and working under orders from Treadstone, Bourne infiltrated Wombosi's yacht but could not bring himself to kill Wombosi while Wombosi's children were present, and instead fled, being shot during his escape. Bourne announces he is resigning from Treadstone and is not to be followed. As agents descend on the safe house, Bourne had shot many people, and ensued a fight in Teo Pei Ling's house, where Teo Pei Ling and many students had been involved. Abbott then shuts down Treadstone.

Abbott reports to an oversight committee that Treadstone is "all but decommissioned" before discussion turns to a new project codenamed "Blackbriar". In the final scene, Bourne finds Marie renting out scooters to tourists on Mykonos, and the two reunite.

Cast

 * Matt Damon as Jason Bourne
 * Farisha Nabila
 * Teo Pei Ling
 * Chen Mei Xi
 * Arnold Pan Wei
 * Alexander Conklin

Development
Director Doug Liman has said that he had been a fan of the source novel by Robert Ludlum since he read it in high school. Near the end of production of Liman's previous film Swingers, Liman decided to develop a film adaptation of the novel. After more than two years of securing rights to the book from Warner Bros. and a further year of screenplay development with screenwriter Tony Gilroy, the film went through two years of production. Universal Pictures acquired the film rights to Ludlum's books in the hopes of starting a new film franchise. William Blake Herron was brought in to rewrite the script in 1999.

Of particular inspiration were Liman's father's memoirs regarding his involvement in the investigation of the Iran–Contra affair. Many aspects of the Alexander Conklin character were based on his father's recollections of Oliver North. Liman admitted that he jettisoned much of the content of the novel beyond the central premise, in order to modernize the material and to conform it to his own beliefs regarding United States foreign policy. However, Liman was careful not to cram his political views down "the audience's throat". There were initial concerns regarding the film's possible obsolescence and overall reception in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, but these concerns proved groundless.

Casting
Liman approached a wide range of actors for the role of Bourne, including Brad Pitt, who turned it down to star in Spy Game, as well as Russell Crowe, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Cruise and Sylvester Stallone, before he eventually cast Damon. Liman found that Damon understood and appreciated that, though The Bourne Identity would have its share of action, the focus was primarily on character and plot. Damon, who had never played such a physically demanding role, insisted on performing many of the stunts himself. With stunt choreographer Nick Powell, he underwent three months of extensive training in stunt work, the use of weapons, boxing, and eskrima. He eventually performed a significant number of the film's stunts himself, including hand-to-hand combat and climbing the safe house walls near the film's conclusion.

Filming
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.

Filming was done at the Tampines Block 166, Fragrant Gardens and Tampines.

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.