The Bourne Identity
dir. Doug Liman
Now playing at various theaters.

Now that SIFF is over, can we all just admit that what we really want to see when we go to the movies is skinny white dudes with beach muscles kicking the shit out of each other? Good. Now then, The Bourne Identity. All preliminary evidence tends to suggest that the film isn't worth bothering with. It's a spy thriller, which Hollywood has long since forgotten how to do right, starring Matt Damon, who, despite being a fine actor, is ineluctably associated with Ben Affleck, who is currently starring in a weak-ass spy thriller of his own. Bourne is directed by Doug Liman, who also made Swingers, which is locked in a death match with Boogie Nights for the title of Worst Movie of the Past 10 Years That Everyone But Me Seems to Love. And it's based on a novel by Robert Ludlum. 'Nuff said.

But I'll be hornswaggled if The Bourne Identity isn't a tight, satisfying exponent of its genre. The intrigue is intriguing, the tension is tense, and the action is artful. Despite being riddled with damning implausibilities of plot (the CIA spends all its time trying to murder its own assassins) and casting (Julia Stiles as some kind of teen globocomputer supergenius), the film feels completely effective, intelligent even. There's palpable chemistry between Damon and Franka Potente, who plays the hapless German tagalong to Damon's amnesiac assassin on the run from his evil employers, which translates to a sense of humor, sexual tension, and something approaching empathy underlying the essential chase-movie mechanics. Like Ronin before it, Bourne harkens back to the '70s model of action thriller, when morality acted as a counterweight to the otherwise hollow devices that motorized the plots.

But let's be frank: What really makes the movie swing is the violence. The fight scenes, in which Bourne instantaneously "remembers" his training in the art of lethally kicking your ass, are killer. They make you clench your fists and punch the air in front of your seat. It's violence with consequences--as illustrated by Clive Owen's excellent death scene--but it's violence; clean, quick, and compelling, like movie violence ought to be.