Today’s movie is an espionage thriller with a scene that
happens on August 23. Watch it tonight and enjoy.
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 40th 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
Copyright by Ivan Walters in 2014.
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