The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy

There is always a “mole”, and the old saying comes true once again, “Follow the Money”.

These 2 films are about as action-packed a suspense thriller as you can get. The first one was more artfully photographed than the 2nd, and depended much less on the moving camera and special effects for its real thrill. It also depended much less on the amount of “drive time” that we get in Supremacy. There were a lot more smashed cars in Supremacy than in Identity. Losing the favorite female early on gave quite a bit of motivation to the audience, juxtaposing the beauty and romance of their initial location in India with that of the cold blue world of Russia, where we end.

But in the end, to have the satisfaction of possible redemption for Borne in finding his true identity, and the fact that he was able to get to the root of his bad dreams and reconcile as best he could with the Russian girl, facing the very thing that we are led to hate by this work, was satisfaction indeed. It felt well-rounded and not a bit trite; albeit overdue it would seem by the length of the story. It might also have worked if he somehow ended up dead in the girl’s apartment at the last, telling her of her parent’s fate and coming to a sort of conclusion himself. We could have learned of his own true life in a moment in which the CIA chief female figure walks in into the Netski girl’s apartment to find him dead there and in a brief moment tells the onlookers his real name, and who he “would have been”.

But all in all it was very satisfactory, and a very personal ending. Normally it’s just about the bad guys and the good guys, and once again we have that running in the background, but at least here there is so much more than just the stakes of cash verses altruism, or some version of lust verses ethics. Here, as I’ve said, a face is put on the “job”. Bourne’s searching to piece the dream back together is our searching to put pieces back together from the torn fragments of our existence too.

And you can tell it's not all about "Finding the Money", as that set of facts does not figure in to the story until almost the end, and in one moment (albeit a chiefly weak cinematic moment and fairly forced - one of the weakest moments of these 2 films)the literal beans are spilled about how much money it all is and who is controlling it, and where it came from.

There is so much in the world that is violent and out of our control. Taking back control and finding the source of our anxiety, and then rooting it out and apologizing for it makes for great story. It is what we really all want to do. There is an anxiety in reality that lurks beneath all of our waking days, and we long to root it out and put it in the light; face it down. We all long to come to a place of reality and integrity and would love to expose the hidden faces of those behind the scenes who bring corruption and greed. But the problem in most cases is that we have also all partaken to some degree in that out-of-control scenario.

The Bourne Identity and Supremacy are about conscience. Conscience outlives even memory. We may not remember specifically, or even know all that we have done, but we sense that it is not made right. We just will not rest until all is made right again.

Steve