The Bourne Identity

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Year:	2002
Country of origin:	USA
Director:	Doug Liman
Genre:	Action thriller
Starring:	Matt Damon, Franka Potente
Rating:	4/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0258463/
Tagline:	He was the perfect weapon until he became the target.
Favourite line:	"I can tell you the license plate numbers of all six cars outside. I can tell you that our waitress is left-handed and the guy sitting up at the counter weighs two hundred fifteen pounds and knows how to handle himself. I know the best place to look for a gun is the cab of the gray truck outside, and at this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Now why would I know that? How can I know that and not know who I am?"

Here's a sentence I never thought I would write:
Matt damon is excellent in this.
Made me feel all cold inside even as I typed that.

Damon plays Jason Bourne, a man whose identity is a mystery, even to himself. After being hauled form the Mediteranean Sea, unconscious and with no memory of how he came to be there we next see him coming to on a freezing park bench where he is approached by two officials, demanding to see his papers. Without thinking, and acting purely on instinct, he pole-axes them both, knocking them unconscious before fleeing into the night.
His recollections are sketchy at best - an incident in Berlin, a bank account number, an assassination attempt - but the pieces won't fit together properly in his mind.
After inadvertantly dragging a young woman into the danger, Marie, played by the decidedly enigmatic and subtlely delicious Franka Potente, an actress more widely known in Germany than anywhere else, it seems a two-tiered chase is on: he seeking out his own identity, and the mysterious authorities known only as Treadstone that seem damn determined to snuff out his life seeking him.

It's high octane stuff, packed full of tension, borrowing heavily from fare such as Bond, Mission: Impossible and the like without being a direct copy of either.
Impressive.