Adapted from Robert Ludlum's 1980 bestseller, The Bourne Identity starts fast and never slows down. The twisting plot revs up in Zurich, where amnesiac CIA assassin Jason Bourne (Matt Damon), with...

Adapted from Robert Ludlum's 1980 bestseller, The Bourne Identity starts fast and never slows down. The twisting plot revs up in Zurich, where amnesiac CIA assassin Jason Bourne (Matt Damon), with no memory of his name, profession, or recent activities, recruits a penniless German traveller (Run Lola Run's Franka Potente) to assist in solving the puzzle of his missing identity. While his CIA superior (Chris Cooper) dispatches assassins to kill Bourne and thus cover up his failed mission, Bourne exercises his lethal training to leave a trail of bodies from Switzerland to Paris. Director Doug Liman (Go) infuses Ludlum's intricate plotting with a maverick's eye for character detail, matching breathtaking action with the humorous, thrill-seeking chemistry of Damon and Potente. Previously made as a 1988 TV movie starring Richard Chamberlain, The Bourne Identity benefits from the sharp talent of rising stars, offering intelligent, crowd-pleasing excitement from start to finish. A man (Damon) washes up on an island in the Mediterranean Sea, suffering from gunshot wounds, and amnesia... he can't even remember his name, or what type of person he is. He soon finds that he is being hunted down by mysterious men, and that he is particularly capable at killing them before they get him, but it's the question of identity that drives him along even as he fights to stay alive, and who's the Jackal? (Franka Potente plays the woman that Bourne kidnaps, but soon helps him on his run; Cooper plays a professor; Cox plays the head of the CIA; Stiles plays Nicolette, a field agent for the Paris office of the NSA)