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The Bourne Identity
Freely 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 traveler (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. --Jeff Shannon

Spy Game
A thinking person's thriller, Spy Game employs dense plotting without sacrificing the kinetic momentum that is director Tony Scott's trademark. The film has the byzantine scope of a novel, focusing on veteran CIA operative Nathan Muir (Robert Redford), whose protégé Tom Bishop (Brad Pitt) is scheduled for execution in a Chinese prison. It's Muir's last day before retiring (cliché alert!), and Bishop is being deliberately sacrificed by oily CIA officials to ensure healthy trade with China. Muir has 24 hours to rescue Bishop and his perfunctory love interest (Catherine McCormack), and Spy Game connects the mentor's end-run strategy to flashbacks of his student's exploits in Berlin, Beirut, and beyond. Ambitious but emotionally bland--and not as exciting as Scott's Enemy of the State--Spy Game offers pass-the-torch humor between leather-faced Redford and pretty boy Pitt, and although their dialogue is occasionally limp, the movie compensates with efficient style and substance. --Jeff Shannon ... Read more

Reviews (57)

Disappointing film gets extra star for photography
How could All the Pretty Horses miss? It is based on a respected book by award-winning author Cormac McCarthy. Its director, Billy Bob Thornton, and its star, Matt Damon, are also award winners. Yet the movie falls short. One reason is that it follows the novel too faithfully, and the result is a screenplay that jumps around. It cuts from one incident to another too abruptly. This technique works in a book but not in a movie. The other reason is that the movie, with its vast panoramas of the earth and sky, is one that is best seen on the big screen. Much of the impact is lost when viewed on television.

Though it takes place in 1949, All the Pretty Horses is still very much a Western. Young John Grady Cole [Matt Damon] sees his world change forever when his mother decides to sell the ranch that's been in the family for generations. All Cole ever wanted to be was a rancher and a cowboy. He convinces his best friend Lacey [Henry Thomas] to go with him to Mexico to find work there. [Cole speaks fluent Spanish.] Soon after they have ridden over the border, they encounter Jimmy Blevins [Lucas Black], a teenager who is riding a horse he obviously couldn't have afforded to buy. He claims it is his, but, fearing the kid is trouble, Cole and Lacey try unsuccessfully to shake him. When Blevins' horse is stolen, they decide to help him steal it back. Afterwards, they lose track of Blevins for a while. They wind up working on a vast cattle ranch. Cole wins the approval of the owner when he proves to be an expert in breaking mustang horses. Cole also catches the eye of Alejandra [Penelope Cruz], the landowner's beautiful daughter. They fall in love, and this and other events get Cole, Lacey and Jimmy into very deep trouble.

Matt Damon gives a thoughtful and nuanced performance. Though he is certainly is a star, he does not work for me as a romantic lead. His scenes with Penelope Cruz are well played, but they lack the chemistry necessary to make us believe this is a relationship the two lovers are willing to give up anything for. Lucas Black, who has worked for Billy Bob Thornton before as the young boy is Sling Blade, is exceptional as Jimmy. He reminds me of the young Leonardo Dicaprio. I hope he choses his future projects more carefully than Leo D. has lately.

I wish I could give All the Pretty Horses a higher grade because it is an obvious labor of love. The plot continuity is just too ragged to justify doing so. Still, it is a handsome picture and not at all a bad way to spend an evening.

A sleeper
Not only did I like the movie, it introduced me to a great writer, Cormac McCarthy. Cormac McCarthy is a modern realist, my American Lit class first brought my attention to this author and the happenstance of picking this movie off the shelf brought a screenplay based on his book to my viewing "pleasure." It's an interesting movie, some call it a typical picture, but I was taken in and thought the story superb. Get past the negativity of the reviews here and see it for yourself. Comac McCarthy deserves recognition for his craft. Matt Damon did a respectable job in the effort and Penelope Cruz (Correlli's Mandolin) put her on my radar screen. I liked it, what more can I say. Oh by the way, I thought this was going to be a "horsey movie" not a tragedy.

Ouch
I have watched this movie somehow from the beginning to the very end and I have only one comment about it : It was an extremely boring movie that told the story of two young men checking the depths of an unknown river with both legs - by going to Mexico.

Really a disappointment
Billy Bob really botched this one. Cormac McCarthy's amazing and epic book deserved much better. Overall, the acting is spotty, and why he would choose someone from Boston to play Grady Cole, a Texan, is beyond me. Barry Pepper would have been a better choice for the lead. Anybody would have been better than an overrated Matt Damon. The outdoor scenes are all shot during the middle of the day, in pale lighting, and the mystique of the southwestern desert landscape that Cormac so eloquently captures on print is lost on film. The cinematography leans more toward a made-for-TV look than film. Marty Stuart provides a slick, polished country music gloss to the soundtrack, when a better band like Calexico, from Tucson, could have provided more haunting and appropriate accompaniments. Hopefully someday a more promising director like Alejandro González Iñárritu or Christopher Nolan will get the rights and give the book the treatment it deserves. Stick to B-movies and Bad Santa sequels Billy Bob!

Surprisingly Authentic
Given how disappointingly liberal, preachy, trite and predictable so many of Hollywood's dramas are, this film presents both tremendous moral balance and a wonderful ease of presentation, all the while offering up one surprise after another. It's as if this film was shot nearly at the time it was to have happened; so clean, real, and spare is the spiritual atmosphere surrounding the characters. Whether the lead characters' authentic, highly believable progress through the story, a simply fantastic performance by young Lucas Black, or the spot-on cameo by a very able Bruce Dern, this film exposes Western sensibilities (even in the mid 20th century) to perfection - Billy Bob Thornton deserves credit for making a beautiful sleeper of a film far too realistic, too believable, and too traditional to ever win a second glance from the Hollywood crowd. See it, and if you're like me, own it for it's simply riveting social and historical placement. ... Read more