Posted by Friday on August 05th 2007 to
Opinion [note: the following blog entry contains major spoilerage for the three "Bourne" films]
I saw the movie “The Bourne Identity” several years ago and was surprised by how good it was. Not your typical action film. So when I heard that the third Bourne movie was coming out this weekend, I went on a full-blown Matt Damon bender and watched all three films consecutively over the past few days. I not only continue to think that they’re a cut above the typical action movie, but the three taken together cover some themes that are surprisingly relevant for libertarians.
In the first film, “The Bourne Identity”, a young man discovers he has total amnesia; he can’t remember who he is or what the HELL he was doing floating in the Mediterranean Sea with two bulletholes in his back. As he attempts to rediscover his own identity, he turns out to have all sorts of talents, including speaking multiple languages and killing people with his bare hands. By the end of the film, he has figured out enough to know that he is a trained assassin for the U.S. government, and they don’t take kindly to letters of resignation. Mayhem ensues. He goes off the grid, eventually reconnecting with the young German woman who befriended him and helped him discover at least part of who he is.
The second movie picks up where the first movie ends. “Bourne” (his codename as an assassin) and his girlfriend Marie (the one he met in the first movie) are trying to live off the radar somewhere on the beach in India. But Bourne’s dark past catches up with him, and Marie is tragically caught in the crossfire.  He still doesn’t remember who he is, but now he’s *really* pissed about it. Mayhem ensues. The CIA director who’s hunting him down, erroneously believing he has assassinated two people in Germany, comes to realize that Bourne is merely a pawn who has been framed by various shadowy entities, one of whom works for the CIA.
The third movie picks up right where the second one ended. Although Bourne has been exonerated of the killings in Munich, he is no longer content to remain in hiding. He wants to find out who he really is, once and for all. He begins retracing his steps (and as he was quite the cosmopolitan globe-trotter, he steps in some pretty interesting locations through the course of the three movies, including France, Spain, Great Britain, Morocco, Greece, Russia and Manhattan), trying to jog his memory. Mayhem, not too surprisingly, ensues.
On a superficial level, these movies can be enjoyed for the calibre of their actors (including Chris Cooper, Joan Allen, Albert Finney, David Straithairn, the alluring Franke Potente, and Boston’s finest, Matt Damon); the exotic locales; the interesting high-tech gadgets; the hair-raising car chases; and plenty of good old-fashioned violence.  Bourne is America’s answer to James Bond. I also find it comical how every single government employee is portrayed as the most incredible tightass. The only person who so much as cracks a smile is Marie, the non-American, non-government-employee free spirit with whom Bourne falls in love. Everything about her screams non-conformity: her rainbow-colored hair, her tattoos, her fashion choices, her nomadic lifestyle… and yet she is far more in touch with the world and with herself than the amnesiac and rigid Bourne, who takes self-denial to a medical extreme.Â
On a deeper level, there’s a powerful idea running through the three films. In the first, Bourne slowly learns who and what he is: a trained assassin. And he’s not entirely comfortable with that realization. In the second, he tries to make amends by tracking down and apologizing to the young daughter of two of his victims. And in the third, he brings it all home by realizing that just remembering who he is isn’t enough. And saying “I’m sorry” doesn’t raise the dead. What it really comes down to is that he CHOSE to become an assassin. Nobody held a gun to his head and made him do it. He chose over and over to kill people he didn’t know, simply because somebody higher up in the bureaucratic food chain told him to. But he can still choose. The choice has always been his. Marie understood this; her final words, in response to Bourne whining about how he has “no choice” but to run from the bad guys, are “Yes, you do.” By the end of the third film he has not only chosen to stop killing people, he’s given another assassin a serious headache by making *him* question his career choice as well.Â
The overriding message of all three films, to me, is about free will. The U.S. government isn’t portrayed as a monolithic evil entity; it’s made up of people. Some of those people choose to do evil things, and to rationalize it to themselves in various ways. Others choose not to do those things, and even put themselves at risk trying to stop them. Some of them have little American flags on their desks; some of them refer to themselves as “patriots”. Does that make it OK when they calmly order the execution of businessmen, journalists, even their own coworkers? Well, free will dictates that each of us must decide that for ourselves. Bourne decides, and if Marie had survived to see it, she would be pleased.  When the terrified Russian cop who corners him says “Please don’t shoot me”, Bourne eyes him for several seconds, then says, in Russian (just how many languages DOES that man speak?!), “My argument is not with you” and lets him go without so much as a Bondian pistol-whip to the head. In fact, he repeatedly chooses not to finish people off out of anger, or vengeance; he does as much as is necessary to survive/escape, and leaves it at that.  He reigns in his lethal talents and uses them purely for self-defense. The U.S. government could use more men like Jason Bourne.
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