Liman had been trying to make The Bourne Identity since the success of his first film Swingers, and maybe even longer than that.

He applied these techniques with a fine-point pen, whereas Greengrass painted with a broader brush, and the result is not an avant garde action film but a satisfying blockbuster with a few key stylistic flourishes. He instructed his camera operators not to read the script too closely, so that they would be following along with the action instead of anticipating it. Its director Doug Liman, who honed his craft on independent films Swingers and Go, occasionally used handheld cameras to make the fight scenes feel more real.

The techniques that Greengrass overdid in Supremacy and Ultimatum are applied more judiciously in the first film. In those films, director Paul Greengrass overwhelmed the viewer with his shaky-cam, quick-cutting style, creating action sequences that felt more immediate, even nauseating. Critics and awards bodies seem to have decided the second and third films – 2004’s The Bourne Supremacy and 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum – are the best of the bunch. Now five movies and one series into the Bourne experience, the film that started it all has been somewhat forgotten. And to distinguish itself from its predecessors, the quips are kept to a minimum. A love story but one that doesn’t get in the way of the hero’s sense of purpose. A globe-trotting adventure with at least one heart-stopping car chase and lots of nifty hand-to-hand combat. Providing a model for both the rest of the Mission: Impossible franchise and the Daniel Craig-led reboot of James Bond, The Bourne Identity nailed the formula of the modern action film: a stoic intelligence agent who has a complicated relationship with his own government. And then came The Bourne Identity, a film that would so heavily influence the future of action film-making that it doesn’t feel the least bit dated today.

Series of jason bourne movies