This would become a big point of contention across the franchise from action purists used to the wide shots and more cultivated cutting of a Van Damme, Chan or Seagal fight sequence. Bourne, an expert in just about everything, including hand to hand combat needed to convincingly dispose of bad guys. A gritty style that at best would be described as visceral, and at worst, shaky cam, would become the franchise raison d’etre. Doug Liman helmed the first film and laid the tracks. So Damon is Bourne, and the first film sees him slowly discovering the truth of his identity in a film that kicks into gear quickly and doesn’t let up. It was a new century though, and the Hollywood action specialists like Arnold Schwarzenner and Sylvester Stallone were being nixed in favour of ‘actors’ and furthermore, by guys a decade or two younger sometimes. Many weren’t convinced he could pull off Bourne, or become a central figure in an action (potential) franchise. From then on it’s a three film quest to find out exactly who he is, whilst trying to evade the sniper scope of a litany of rival hitmen sent by agency officials to cover their mistakes and corrupt government officials with dark secrets to hide.ĭamon wasn’t known as a physical performer in any way at that time. Beginning with The Bourne Identity, which cast Matt Damon as an action hero, we meet Bourne being fished out of the sea with bullets in his back and no memory.

Based on the Robert Ludlum novels, the Bourne trilogy told the tale of trained government assassin Jason Bourne. Tom Jolliffe looks back at the original Jason Bourne trilogy, its impact on action cinema, and whether it still holds up…Īt a time when the Bond franchise was growing tired, and a slew of over the top action films attempted to have either edge or attitude ( xXx) or riff on The Matrix, another franchise came along and shook the genre.

Sequence of jason bourne movies