[ratethatcommentary.com]
Login | Register


The Bourne Identity (2002)

NOTE: This commentary is only available on the original "Collector's Edition" DVD release of "The Bourne Identity" from August 2003. The "Explosive Extended Edition" release from July 2004 has no commentary tracks.

Commentaries on this disc:

Commentary 1: Director Doug Liman Rating:5.2/10 (8 votes) [graph]Login to vote or review
Reviewed by msz on August 14th, 2008:Find all reviews by msz
A so-so commentary by the director. Doug Liman recounts some interesting background information at times (e.g shooting in Prague and Paris with a French crew, the history of the "new" ending and how he sees this movie as some kind of "Wizard of Oz") but there are also periodically longer pauses. In addition he seems to check off a list of people he has to / wants to thank during the commentary.
Ok for a one time listen but that's it.
Reviewed by grimjack on May 10th, 2023:Find all reviews by grimjack
Surprisingly low energy considering how I remembered him on the commentary for "Go", and from all the stories about the hell this shoot was for him, including tales of the studio trying to fire him, getting the actors to try and reign him in, bringing in script writers to try and get him to be better organized on the shoot, etc.. He only brings this up towards the 90 min mark when they rewrote and reshot a 15 min section of the movie.

He mostly talks about how they filmed certain scenes, like which cameras he used, what was digital or not, and the locations. He does bring up how he did not want Paris to look like it always does in the movies, showing only the tourist sites, but instead the back streets.
He does spend a respectable amount of time talking about how he got his secondary players, and which crew he worked the closest with, and what they did to prepare. But only a couple of moments where he talks about direction choices he gave to the actors to be the characters he wanted them to be.

Robert Ludmum died after filming the movie, but not before it was released, and the director really regrets not being able to show it to him.

He spends a few minutes talking about why they chose Kali as the fighting style, and how he decided to use some of its philosophy to define Bourne.

The movie had a lot of things shown but not overly explained, and I would have liked to hear him explain some of these, as he is somewhat known for them. He brings up a few starting with the farmhouse, but there were a lot others beforehand.

There are at least 10 moments that last a minute where he does not say a single thing. Which again, surprised me.