An Italian fishing boat pulls a man from the Mediterranean Sea near Marseille. He has two bullet wounds in his back and a tiny laser projector surgically embedded in his hip that displays a Swiss bank account number. He has no memory of who he is, how he got there, or why someone tried to kill him. At the bank in Zurich, he discovers his name — Jason Bourne — along with a passport, a gun, and a large amount of cash. But the name means nothing to him.
As Bourne travels across Europe trying to piece together his identity, he discovers that he possesses extraordinary abilities: hand-to-hand combat skills, fluency in multiple languages, hyperawareness of his surroundings, and an instinct for tactical thinking that suggests military or intelligence training. He convinces Marie Kreutz, a young German woman, to drive him to Paris in exchange for cash — and their lives immediately come under threat from professional assassins.
Back at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, Deputy Director Alexander Conklin is in a panic. Bourne was part of Operation Treadstone, a classified black-ops program that trained assassins, and his resurfacing threatens to expose the entire operation. Conklin activates every Treadstone agent to eliminate Bourne, but discovers that the very skills they programmed into him make him nearly impossible to kill. The Bourne Identity reinvented the spy thriller with gritty realism, frantic handheld cinematography, and a hero who is as dangerous as he is confused.
Director & Cast
Director: Doug Liman — bringing an indie sensibility to a blockbuster framework, Liman grounded the spy genre in reality and influenced everything from Bond to Mission: Impossible.
Cast: Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, Franka Potente as Marie Kreutz, Chris Cooper as Alexander Conklin, Clive Owen as The Professor, Brian Cox as Ward Abbott, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Nykwana Wombosi, and Julia Stiles as Nicky Parsons.
Behind the Scenes
Matt Damon trained extensively in boxing, Kali (Filipino stick fighting), and weapons handling for the role. The film’s iconic Mini Cooper chase through the streets of Paris was shot over several weeks using real Parisian streets. Based on Robert Ludlum’s bestselling 1980 novel, the film launched a franchise that earned over $1.6 billion worldwide across five films.
