One summer late evening, sitting in my country house, I watched the movie “The Bourne Identity” with Matt Damon as Jason Bourne. The story really touched me. A man was brought aboard to a small ship with anglers on it. The man was severely injured and had been in water for a long period of time. He was riddled with bullets and was barely alive. A doctor, which was at the ship, extracted not only bullets from the man’s body, but a tiny object. As it appeared, the object was some sort of a laser pointer. When switched on and pointed on a wall, it represented strange data: a name of a bank in Germany, a number of a bank account at the bank and something like that. When the patient became conscious, he didn’t remember anything from his past…
Quite soon he realized that he had been an assassin. Although his memory was blank, his skills remained with him. Strange people tried to kill him, and the man wanted to know whom he had been before…
The number one reason I like this movie is that it shows us how a man can totally change in a moment, how he is able to struggle for his new life no matter what. This is an action type of movies. It filled with lots of emotional moments, when Jason Bourne has sudden flashes of memories. And they frighten him.
A few years ago, I learned about the trilogy of Robert Ludlum, which included the books “The Bourne Identity”, “The Bourne Supremacy” and “The Bourne Ultimatum”. By that time I had been watched the rest two movies, which had had the same titles as the books. The idea of buying and reading the trilogy came to my mind immediately. However, I was a little bit afraid… I had watched the movies, I knew the plot. It might not be interesting at all.
Finally, out of a sense of curiosity I started to read the first novel. I was shocked! The book and the movie have nothing in common except the basic idea of a man, which had skills of assassin and lost his memory. The book has more complicated, more twisted and more profound story than its movie counterpart. I totally understand this. Assume producers want to create a movie, which is so close to the content of the book. In this case they have to create a mini-series of “The Bourne Identity” and they also have to put on the screen all these characters of the book, all these difficult to understand at first sight sub-plots. An ordinary viewer like me, who is not fluent with the banking, military, and surveillance services will find himself pretty annoyed. Not necessarily, but it may happen that instead of a spectacular action movie producers may end up with something less attractive and not suitable for cinemas.
I’ve read many comments about the book trilogy and about the movie trilogy. It seems to me (roughly estimated) that 45% of the people like the books’ version of the whole story and hate the movies’ version of the story, 45% think exactly in the opposite direction. Only 10% of people like both versions, saying that for them books have one plot, movies the other, and the very best way to enjoy “The Bourne Trilogy” is to never mix up books’ storyline and the movies’ storyline. Just think about them as two separate stories and you’ll feel OK. Producers could create something more related to the Ludlum’s version. However, think about it. How many awesome scenes would we have lost? If we already have a book, why copy it completely and put it on the screen? Each of us, who have read this book, sees Jason Bourne in a unique way.
One thing for sure, this book is very emotional! It triggers a range variety of different feelings. It astonishes me over and over again. Nothing is static in this book, nothing is clearly certain. Some pages make your heart pound like 10 km running, some pages make you almost cry while others will astound you and make you smile!
