August 23 - The Bourne Identity (1988)

This is a movie with a scene that happens today – August 23. I hope you enjoy this film and watch it tonight.

THE BOURNE IDENTITY(1988)

A man is shot and falls off a boat into the sea in the middle of a storm on August 23, 1988. [00:01 to 02:03] He washes ashore and is taken to the house of Geoffrey Washburn, who nurses him back to health. The man has a piece of microfilm implanted in his leg that has the account number from a bank in Zurich.  When he wakes the man has no idea of his name or who he is.  The man travels to Zurich. At the hotel he learns his name is “Jason Bourne” and that he works for Treadstone71. He goes to the bank and finds he has an account with $15 million dollars in it. On leaving the bank two men try to kill Bourne, but he escapes. At his hotel when he spots two  of the men who tried to kill him. Bourne kidnaps Marie St. Jacques, a Canadian economist, and uses her car to get away. He takes her to a restaurant, where the terrified owner tells him INTERPOL has been there looking for Bourne. He also tells Bourne that Chernak gave him an envelope  to give to Bourne that is connected to the assassination of US ambassador Leland.  Bourne takes Marie to Chernak’s apartment and he ends up killing Chernak. Bourne is wounded and Marie escapes, but she falls into the hand of the men looking for Bourne and tells them where he has gone.  At the boardinghouse Bourne escapes one killer, but is then captured and identified by Marie, who was led to believe the men tracking Bourne are the police. They order Marie killed. He overpowers his two guards and is successful in saving Marie. He tells Marie to go, but she refuses. She drives them to an isolated hotel in the country where they have an intimate encounter. They go to Paris to retrieve the $7 million he transferred there and start to think he might be Carlos the Jackal. Meanwhile the real Carlos is looking for Bourne. Marie goes in to get the cash, but two of the men from Zurich enter the bank just after her. However Bourne lures them away and browbeats a bank official into revealing Bergeron’s dress shop is a point of contact for the men tracking Bourne. Marie learns her boss in Canada was killed when he started asking questions about  Treadstone71. She is very upset by this and almost leaves Jason.   At an NSA meeting the members discuss what happened to Bourne, who was to pretend to be a contract killer who would take credit for hits performed by Carlos the Jackal to draw Carlos out into the open. Some think Bourne really has become a hitman for hire.  Bourne goes to the dress shop, whose owner tells him she thinks Bourne wants to replace Carlos. Marie runs from the Canadian Embassy when they say they’re looking for Bourne and later she is named as a suspect in the Zurich murders. Carlos’s men attack Treadstone’s New York office and frame Bourne for the murders there. The NSA decides to eliminate Bourne. A phone number Bourne found at the dress shop is that of Gen. Villiers. From his house they follow the dress shop owner to a meeting with Carlos. Bourne shoots at him, but he escapes. They confront the General and convinces him that his wife is Carlos’s lover. A guy from the dress shop tells him he is not Bourne, but has been surgically altered to look like him. Bourne arranges a midnight meeting with David Abbott, who Villiers said was the one man at Treadstone who could be trusted. The traitor Gillette kills Gen Conklin and fatally wounds Abbott. Bourne’s real name is David Webb and Abbott tells him he was altered so he could assume the identity of Jason Bourne, who was a vicious killer in order to flush out Carlos. He shames Gen. Villiers, who has killed his wife into helping him. He goes to Treadstone’s HQ in New York, where he confronts and kills Carlos.  He’s reunited with Marie.       

                    

An interesting old style spy thriller. This version is much darker than the Matt Damon vehicles. Here, for instance Bourne kidnaps Marie at gunpoint and forces her to help him.

The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum (Richard Marek Publishers, NY, 1980) at page 154 gives the date he was found as August 24, so he went in water day before

Producer - Frederick Muller

Director – Robert Young

Screenplay - Carol Sobieski

Awards – The film won the Outstanding Achievement in Music Composition for a Mini-Series or Special Emmy. It was also nominated for the Outstanding Editing for a Mini-Series or Special – Single Camera Production Emmy at the 40^th Primetime Emmy Awards.

Runtime – 3 hours 5 minutes

Released -  May 8, 1988

Starring –

Richard Chamberlain as Jason Bourne

Jaclyn Smith as Marie St. Jacques

Anthony Quayle as Gen. Francois Villiers

Donald Moffat as David Abbott

Denholm Elliott as Geoffrey Washburn