Action
Jason Bournes fight in his Paris flat in The Bourne Identity is a seminal moment which changed super spy franchises forever. No gadgets (except a Biro), no elaborate set up, no witty one liners. Just one of the most brutal, nerve shredding physical fights I had seen in any spy movie until that point. Coupled with the absolute hammering he takes throughout the rest of the movie and its sequel, The Bourne Supremacy, when he falls onto a boat, is shot and put through a car crash, Bourne laid down a marker as to what a secret agent has to be prepared to do to get through a movie. Since then, it has been an arm's race between Jason Bourne, James Bond and Ethan Hunt as to which one of them can take the most punishment, yet still function. It all made Pierce Brosnans capture in Die Another Day look like a tickling contest. Not previously known for very physical roles prior to The Bourne Identity, Matt Damon nevertheless blew everyone away with his hand to hand combat scenes. That fight in Paris was topped in the Bourne Ultimatum with a simply awesome confrontation with Desh and it was the intimacy of seeing Bourne being bashed to bits in the Moscow and New York car chases that people remember, not the exotic settings and wide angle shots of the Kremlin and the Statue of Liberty. Bourne was just a machine and he continued to be so during the entire trilogy and there is no doubt that he influenced the other two spies in their approach to action. No sooner had Jason Bourne fallen four stories down an internal stair case, than Ethan Hunt was getting high explosives shoved up his nostrils and being blown from one side of a bridge to the other. MI3 is a movie about the mental, emotional and physical torture of Ethan Hunt. As for James Bond? Well, I feel the symbolism of his first kill taking place in a public toilet was set up with the sole purpose of sending the message to Jason Bourne, that this MI6 agent would quite literally kick the brown stuff out of you, before giving the seat a wipe and flushing it away on your behalf. The dude put a guy's face through a sink! Not content, this Sherman tank of a Bond only got meaner in Casino Royale by fighting off killers on a flight of stairs, drinking poison and eventually exposing his balls of steel in one of the most excruciating interrogation scenes outside of an Amsterdam S&M club. But, and heres the clincher, James Bonds opponents did not get meaner with him. Indeed, after his explosive start, it was a continual decline for Daniel Craigs James Bond in terms of the physical opposition he faced. He eventually arrived at the indignity of fighting a strange looking accountant at the end of Quantum of Solace. Ethan Hunt also, despite the damage done to himself and even after his amazing Spiderman feats on sky scrapers, has not come close to Jasons final battle with Desh and, for me, Jason Bourne kept his title as the ultimate badass. Click "next" for Humour...