Saturday Matinee: The Bourne Identity

Bourne Again? ReBourne? I'm brainstorming titles for the 5th Bourne movie, set to bring back Matt Damon as Jason Bourne. Natural Bourne Killer?

There's a lot of chatter among fans of the franchise about who else will join the production. Julia Stiles just signed on to come back as Nicky Parsons, the CIA analyst who ultimately helps Bourne out but she's relatively small potatoes; will Joan Allen be back as CIA operative Pam Landy? Will Jeremy Renner bring his Aaron Cross character to the film? When will Alicia Vikander, who supposedly dropped Tom Hanks and The Circle because she's heavily rumored to be doing the Bourne movie, actually commit?
Questions, so many questions.

My question is will it be any good without Tony Gilroy? Gilroy is the guy who wrote all the other Bourne movies, yep, even Bourne Legacy, the one that starred not Matt Damon, but Jeremy Renner.  Gilroy is not going to be back for Bourne #5; that's being written and directed by Paul Greengrass. Greengrass is a terrific director. Matt Damon thinks he's such a good director that he refused to make another Bourne movie without him. Greengrass helmed both The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum to high praise he doesn't have a list of great writing credits. He just doesn't. I'll repeat myself, all the other Bourne movies were written by Tony Gilroy. For my money, that's the key to Bourne's success. 

For today's Saturday Matinee, let's zero in on The Bourne Identity, the 2002 film that started it all. As I said Tony Gilroy wrote the screenplay based on Robert Ludlum's novel. Doug Limon directed. Limon also helmed one of my all-time favorite action films, Edge of Tomorrow starring the weird but wonderful Tom Cruise.

You know what The Bourne Identitiy is about. A man gets picked up by a fishing boat, he's been shot but has no memory of who shot him, or why, or even who he is. We know who he is. He's Jason Bourne. The Operation Treadstone contract assassin. 

Part of what I love about The Bourne Identity is that while I know it's an action movie, it's also a love story. As was the Limon-directed Edge of Tomorrow.  In The Bourne Identity Bourne finds love with Marie (Franka Potente), the woman he pays to chauffeur him across Europe in a thrilling flight for his life. Oh, wait, could it be you haven't seen The Bourne Identity? Am I actually spoiling something for you here? If that's the case I  better not tell you what happens in The Bourne Supremacy, the 2nd movie in the series. 

The Bourne Identity boasts some great performances from Damon and Potente but also Joan Allen, Chris Cooper, Ronnie Cox and Clive Owens as the robotic Professor, a killing machine. 

Let's just watch the trailer and then if you want, you can watch the whole movie this afternoon via the usual places: Amazon, VUDU, Google-play and M-Go. You'll have to check your Netflix account to see if it's available to stream there. 

Are you up for the fifth Bourne movie? Got a good title for the reboot? Talk to me.