In praise of the orig­i­nal Bourne trilogy

“Who has a safe­ty deposit box full of mon­ey and six pass­ports and a gun? Who has a bank account num­ber in their hip?” If you want some­thing done right, you’ve got to do it your­self; an adage that mem­o­ry loss and schem­ing CIA pup­pet mas­ters force Jason Bourne to live by. Words that suit the inten­tions, and achieve­ments, of a game-chang­ing tril­o­gy that raised the bar, revi­talised and rede­fined the mod­ern espi­onage thriller.

The work of Matt Damon and direc­tors Doug Liman and Paul Green­grass stands as a bench­mark, a point of ref­er­ence for sus­pense­ful main­stream cin­e­ma with a desire to head back out into the cold, or at least ben­e­fit from its frosty edges. But in the late 1990s, the mar­ket saw the decline of James Bond, the rise of Ethan Hunt, innu­mer­able Har­ri­son Ford flicks and Austin Pow­ers being all groovy, baby: were we real­ly cry­ing out for anoth­er super spy? The answer: absolutely.

The para­noia, fear and uncer­tain­ty which char­ac­teris­es post‑9/​11 Amer­i­ca is embod­ied in a fig­ure first seen in The Bourne Identity’s open­ing moments from the murky depths of the Mediter­ranean, a minute bea­con emit­ting the faintest flick­er of hope. Dragged from the sea, half-dead, two bul­lets lodged in his back and a microchip embed­ded under the skin, when dis­cov­ered he is unable to recall his own name. There is no open­ing action spec­tac­u­lar. No close-ups of our hero paus­ing to fire-off unfea­si­bly corny one-lin­ers. Female onlook­ers aren’t phys­i­cal­ly inca­pac­i­tat­ed by glanc­ing upon his hot bod. How can we believe in a lead char­ac­ter suf­fer­ing from crip­pling headaches and unex­plained amne­sia? The answer is sim­ple: Matt Damon, a quin­tes­sen­tial everyman.

The West­ern world was wound­ed, frag­ile in the wake of the Twin Tow­ers attacks, and Jason Bourne, for all his hand-to-hand com­bat, map-read­ing skills, reck­less dri­ving and com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­fi­cien­cy exhibits a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty that makes him dis­tinct­ly relat­able. As did the actor’s rel­a­tive­ly diminu­tive physique. Though in unques­tion­ably good shape and as a tough as a cof­fin nail, his intel­lect, instincts and hon­esty super­sede the phys­i­cal­i­ty attrib­uted to a tra­di­tion­al action hero. He doesn’t want to exploit women in any way, and he wants to express remorse for past sins. When he search­es for the daugh­ter of his first tar­get at the con­clu­sion of The Suprema­cy, he says: ​“When what you love is tak­en from you, you want to know the truth.”

Mono­syl­lab­ic to a fault, his sto­ical demeanour thin­ly dis­guis­es his emo­tion­al trau­ma. Not least after the killing of his con­fi­dante, Marie (Famke Potente), while on a mis­sion in Goa ear­li­er in the same film. His ret­i­cence and lack of brava­do is what makes him pro­found. Female char­ac­ters across each of the films are sub­stan­tial­ly more than sex­u­al objects. To a large extent they dri­ve the nar­ra­tive: Marie facil­i­tates his escape; Pam Landy (Joan Allen) – in Suprema­cy and Ulti­ma­tum – is an unsung ally and female pow­er­house in a work­place of use­less, unscrupu­lous men; and Nicky Par­sons (Julia Stiles) duti­ful­ly keeps the flame of his per­son­al safe­ty burn­ing while retain­ing a cau­tious dis­tance from first to last.

The over­lap­ping of time struc­tures knit the films togeth­er superbly and put faith in an audience’s abil­i­ty to stitch togeth­er the pieces via flash­backs and a glob­al trail of crumbs. In these com­pelling adap­ta­tions of Robert Ludlum’s nov­els, nar­ra­tive and per­for­mance are eco­nom­i­cal. Super­flu­ous action is always excised. A refresh­ing absence of bul­let-dodg­ing and unnec­es­sary explo­sions sees a biro, a book, a mag­a­zine, or tow­el as Bourne’s domes­tic weapons of choice – no dis­ap­pear­ing cars or gad­gets. He uses pay­phones, lug­gage lock­ers and a dic­ta­phone, a tool that proves might­i­er than the sword or a pis­tol in dis­patch­ing Bri­an Cox’s crooked sec­tion chief, Ward Abbott in Supremacy.

Bru­tal fight scenes are a pil­lar of each instal­ment and are chore­o­graphed with the grace of a bal­let, every punch land­ing a blow with a view­er as well as adver­saries. Essays could be writ­ten on the majesty of tim­ing, cam­er­a­work and edit­ing in three cen­tre­piece car chas­es across Paris, Moscow and New York in Iden­ti­ty, Suprema­cy and Ulti­ma­tum respec­tive­ly, but impor­tant­ly there is always an objec­tive in mind. They are, per­haps, a lit­tle indul­gent, but point A leads to point B via a nec­es­sar­i­ly destruc­tive, exhil­a­rat­ing route across each of the cities.

The con­ti­nu­ity of plot is deeply sat­is­fy­ing and a wel­come change from the unbe­liev­able leaps of faith in so many com­pa­ra­ble films. John Powell’s tremen­dous, instant­ly recog­nis­able score fur­ther moulds an ever-mov­ing sto­ry into a cohe­sive whole and as soon as Moby’s Extreme Ways kicks in over cred­its, we are left want­i­ng more. With 2012’s The Bourne Lega­cy sit­ting as an awk­ward and much maligned ele­phant in the room, the cur­tain is set to fall on the lat­est, and much antic­i­pat­ed, Greengrass/​Damon iter­a­tion. With Jason Bourne – the title under­lin­ing the main man’s pres­ence this time around – fans of the fran­chise have high hopes. He won’t let them down.