Sorry, this movie sucks

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

The mini-series begins with a gunfight between two men on the deck of a ship passing through a storm somewhere in the Meditterean Sea. One of the men is shot and tumbles overboard and rapidly sinks into the murky water. Fortunately, he recovers his strength long enough to surface and eventually gets washed ashore on the southern coast of France. Unconscious and bleeding from two bullet wounds he is taken to a village doctor by the name of "Dr. Geoffrey Washburn" (Denholm Elliott) who carefully patches him up. When his patient finally regains consciousness Dr.Washburn discovers that he has no recollection of anything—including his name. Yet it soon becomes apparent that he has a good skill with guns and self-defense. Not only that, but while he hunts for clues to his identity he also discovers that paid killers and the law are hunting for him as well. Now rather than reveal any more and risk spoiling this film for those who haven't seen it I will just say that the entire plot featured mystery and action throughout. Although Richard Chamberlain (as "Jason Bourne") and Jaclyn Smith ("Marie St. Jacques") performed in a decent manner, I thought the made-for-television format hampered what could have been an outstanding movie and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.

I've only watched Part I of this two-part miniseries but it's possible to see with some clarity where it's going. I may have managed to see the whole thing when it was released some twenty years ago but didn't remember any of it except for the criminally beautiful Jaclyn Smith and a sexy scene in which Jason Bourne, Richard Chamberlain, tenderly undresses her. Don't worry. No nudity, and the sex is all slow-motion close ups and dissolves, one cliché following in lockstep on the heels of the previous one.Compared to the more recent release with Matt Damon in the title role, it's better than I'd expected. TV movies don't have the time for rehearsals and the budget imposes other limits on the production. I worked in a miniseries with Jaclyn Smith -- the critically acclaimed cult hit, "Sidney Sheldon's Windmills of the Gods" -- and it was slam-bang fast.Compared to the recent version, this one is more of a mystery than an action movie, and although I gather it sticks closer to Ludlum's novel (you can do that better in three hours than in half that time) it still has a couple of holes that were missing from the Matt Damon feature. It was never hard to follow the feature film but this series sometimes lost me in its divagations. In the film we get a good look at every piece of information Damon uncovers in his search for his identity. Here, sometimes Chamberlain acts on intuition.The lack of rehearsal time and character development shows too. Two times, in Part I, someone mentions how good Chamberlain is at fighting and killing people. But he's not particularly good at it. He gets the crap beaten out of him several times. And when he pulls a hidden gun from his sock and blows his captor away, it's something any routine Private Eye could do. The magisterial mano a mano combat in the feature film required extensive choreography and rehearsal. It was evidently based on karel maga, the most brutal form of martial arts. We were treated to some practice in it while I was in boot camp, only it didn't have a name then. Here's one of the lessons. If you're in a fight for your life, you use whatever objects are at hand -- ball-point pens or blankets -- and you can't lose if you simply pop the other guy's eyeball out with your thumb, as if it were a grape. That's what a professional assassin would learn. Chamberlain, on the other hand, seems to know nothing of this. His natural form is the fist fight, like those you've seen in thousands of other movies. Easier to learn and to choreograph, therefore easier and faster to shoot, and therefore less expensive.Chamberlain's conception of Bourne's character is different from Damon's. Not necessarily worse than Damon's, but different. Chamberlain's Bourne is constantly puzzled by what he's being put through, and shows an occasional cranky mood. Half the time he's unsure of himself, uncertain about what to do next. And the writers have him (and Jaclyn Smith too) talk to themselves quite a bit so the viewer can keep up with his thoughts and the emotions that accompany them. "What am I doing here?" Or, "That CAN'T be true." Or, waiting for someone to answer a phone, "Come on! Come on!" Damon's Bourne acts almost entirely on instinct. He seems to remember more of how to behave like a prey animal, and he remembers how to speak French and German. He strides quickly from place to place and he reacts impulsively and with skill in situations of violence. He's entirely aware of his surroundings and their potential, while Chamberlain is befuddled by them.The miniseries, like the film, was shot in European locations and captures well the chill drizzle of a continental winter in Zurich and Paris. Not a bad effort, all things taken into account.

I flipped to this after seeing it on the channel guide thinking it was the Matt Damon version. I didn't know it had been a made-for-TV movie before Damon took a shot at it.I watched it for about 10 minutes and found it laughable. Maybe I didn't give it a chance but the action segment I saw with Chamberlin made him look more like a school teacher than an assassin.I can't recommend this to anyone as long as the Matt Damon version exists. Maybe I should read the book and then watch the 1988 version to see if it hold up better.OK, IMDb requires 10 lines of text. I have nothing more to say so this is just fluff talk.

Chamberlain was probably happy to shoot this film in Europe, but I'm sure he like the pay as well. At this time he was probably the highest paid actor doing films specifically made for TV broadcast.I got the DVD of it yesterday, and the main reason I got it was because I just watched the Matt Damon series, and was curious to see how this was adapted for the "small screen" (not so small anymore). It's very different but held up well on its own, as I see it. It has things that the Damon films miss, such as in-depth character development, mostly due to being twice as long too, and a much more realistic lead character. It also has other things that make it a lesser film, like some unrealistic plot contrivances and occasionally overplayed emotional conflicts, similar to what you'd see on popular TV shows of the time like Dallas and Dynasty.One thing I like much better in the older version was the wider shots of most action scenes. This version translates well to a large screen, whereas the new version uses too many super-tight close-up action shots. These are typically used when the wider action shots don't really work well, and the closer shots give the viewer less detailed info about the action, but more movement across the screen, so as to make viewers think they saw lots of intense action.