Fortunately, Jason discovers himself to be a much more dangerous quarry than Harrison Ford’s Richard Kimble.Īnother similarity between The Bourne Identity and The Fugitive: In both films the chase itself is more involving than anything motivating the chase. Marshall bent on capturing his target, but a shady CIA operative who wants to have him killed. The Bourne Identity is essentially an extended chase movie, like The Fugitive, except that in this movie the Tommy Lee Jones figure (a malevolent Chris Cooper) isn’t a U.S. Whatever the reason for Jason’s extreme survival skills, that he needs them now is not in doubt. I can tell you that the best place to look for a gun is in the cab of the truck outside, and that at this altitude I can run flat out for 20 minutes before my hands start to shake. 'I can tell you that our waitress is left-handed, and the guy at the counter weighs 215 pounds and knows how to handle himself. 'I can tell you the license plates of all six cars in the parking lot,' Jason tells Marie, a German drifter who gets caught up in his flight, as the two of them stop for a meal.

Jason may not know much, but he’s pretty sure he’s something out of the ordinary.

Certainly the amazing abilities and instincts that suddenly surface when needed are clues to who and what he is. Perhaps his honorable aspirations themselves are a good sign. Like the memory-impaired antihero of Memento, the protagonist of Doug Liman’s The Bourne Identity (and a trilogy of Robert Ludlum novels before that) has no choice but to trust himself even though he can’t be sure he’s a trustworthy individual. Is that the sort of thing that happens to people who try to do the right thing?

Jason remembers nothing about his life prior to being fished out of the Mediterranean Sea by an Italian trawler with a pair of bullets in his back. He doesn’t even know himself - not even his real name ('Jason Bourne' is only one of a string of identities on a pile of passports, all his, that he finds in a Zurich safety deposit box). Jason Bourne is in no position to answer that.

Jason bourne movies.