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Marie Kreutz: Do you have ID?

Jason Bourne: [laughs] Not really.

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Jason's Canadian passport has been issued in 1993 and expires in 2003. Canadian passports are only valid for five years. See more...

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The Bourne Identity (2002) - 33 corrections

Directed by Doug Liman, starring Brian Cox, Chris Cooper, Clive Owen, Franka Potente, Julia Stiles, Matt Damon (add more)

Genres: Action, Adventure, Mystery, Thriller

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

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After Matt Damon leaves the boat, his character looks around wondering where to go. When he walks off and a close-up of passing civilians happen, if you looks closely, you can see him immediately hiding behind the passing vehicle, giving the illusion that he suddenly "disappeared". A closer inspection shows a portion of his orange coat and even his footsteps below the vehicle keeping up with its speed. [Even within the context of the film, he either hid behind the vehicle or teleported away. Since there's nothing supernatural about this series, we must assume the former was intended. Therefore, it's no mistake to see him doing precisely what he's supposed to be doing.]
Edit Corrected by Phixius Time
After Jason is dropped off on land, he is seen walking away from the camera, then disappears as a vehicle passes him. If you look carefully at the vehicle after it's passed him, it's possible to see feet and a shadow belonging to someone running behind it. [This is no mistake. Bourne is simply running alongside the vehicle.]
Edit
When the agent ambushes Jason and Marie in Jason's Paris flat, they have a really impressive fight sequence. During this fight, Jason breaks the other man's leg. When he gets up off the floor after the fight and runs to the window to jump out, he doesn't have even the slightest hint of a limp. [Jason doesn't break the leg, he hyper-extends the knee. This hurts his opponent quite a bit, but as is also demonstrated by the pen-stabbing, the assailant is able to ignore the pain to do what he needs to do. It's part of his training.]
Edit Corrected by Phixius
Right when Womboosi is shot, he is already past the window when the shots come through. Obviously done for the safety of the actor or stuntman, but visible. [If the shooter is at an angle to the window, his best shot would be when Womboosi is past the window.]
Edit
In this scene where Jason disappears when the blue car passes, you can see him duck and follow the drivers side of the car. Just follow the color of his orange jacket. [This isn't a mistake. There's nothing to say Jason Bourne has super-powers and can just disappear at the drop of a hat. He uses the bus for cover.]
Edit Corrected by SexyIrishLeprechaun Time
When viewed at half speed on the Bourne Identity DVD, it is clear when Bourne shoots the Professor in the field for the second time, that smoke comes away from the Professor's body before the shot is fired. I don't know much about guns, but it doesn't seem to make sense. [Sorry, but the rules of the site say you have to able to see it at normal viewing speed.]
Edit Corrected by tw_stuart Time
When Matt Damon is picked up by the Zurich police as he sleeps on a park bench, the officers address him in German with Swiss accents. This is very different to the actual Swiss dialect used in Switzerland. German is only used when talking to Foreigners or Swiss from the French or Italian parts of the country. At this point the officers do not know that Matt Damon is American. [There is no set dialect that the officers must or have to use. It's presumptuous to say they wouldn't use a particular accent. Even if they only used German with Swiss accents for foreigners, the officers ask him for his papers when they wake him up, so they likely then knew he was a foreigner and not a local.]
Edit Corrected by Lummie
At the beginning of the film, the Italian sailor gives Bourne some money, saying something along the lines of "it's not much but it should get you to Switzerland." Yet in the shots we get of Bourne on the train, he is in a first-class car. [It may not have been much but it was apparently enough to buy a first class ticket. Extravagant perhaps but not a mistake.]
Edit Corrected by tw_stuart Time
As the CIA crew is learning about Marie's family, one operator refers to a "step-brother", then Chris Cooper refers to him as a "half-brother". [This is a character mistake rather than a movie mistake. Chris Cooper's character is under severe pressure.]
Edit Corrected by tw_stuart
When the first assassin runs out of bullets shortly after coming through the apartment window, his gun makes a series of rapid clicks as if dry firing full-auto, but real guns, even full-auto ones, don't keep on clicking when empty. It should either make a single click, or a nearly inaudible one. [Certain weapons, including that used by the assassin in this scene, are not solely mechanical, but will have electrically driven actions in order to increase rate of fire or dependability, as a result of which the firing pin will recycle as long as the trigger is held down.]
Edit Time
When Jason is outside the consulate's outer door and trying to get onto the ledge, the first Marine to open the door has an M-16. Rewind and you will see that this same Marine has a H&K submachine gun just before he opens the door. [Marines on embassy duty are all infantry trained. Part of that training is selecting the right weapon for the right environment, foe, etc. So when pursuing Bourne throughout the building, which those Marines would have known by heart, the staff sergeant in the lead would have wielded a short-range SMG like the Heckler and Koch. However, knowing that he was about to open a door that lead to a broad expanse of open street, other buildings, etc. he would have instinctually switched off with another troop for the longer-range, harder-hitting M-16.]
Edit
A minor (though not story-shattering) plot hole: During their drive from Zurich to Paris, Jason and Marie would have found the Swiss-French border in their way - something which doesn't even seem to cross their minds (or the minds of the CIA agents who are trying to track them). Given that Jason had just caused a major security panic at the US Consulate in Zurich, getting out of Switzerland would probably have been a bit trickier than portrayed in the film. Even if the CIA and the Swiss police didn't know where they were headed, they did have IDs on both Jason and Marie, as well as a description of their car. One way or another, Jason and Marie would have had to figure out a way to get into France undetected. Yes, maybe we're "bending reality" a bit here for the purposes of the film, but as a frequent international traveller, this is one "bending" that bugs me a bit. I wish I could make pain-in-the-neck border officers disappear that easily. [I used to live in Switzerland and drive to France all the time without being stopped at the border. The border guards are much stricter when entering Switzerland but there are roads which are fully guarded only during the day with occasional guards at night to catch out those who shop too much in France (they even have voluntary customs posts believe it or not because the Swiss are alarmingly honest). In general, leaving Switzerland is easy so there's no mistake.]
Edit Corrected by tw_stuart
Jason demands a meeting with Conklin at 17:30 local time in France. Assuming he woke up at 8:00 spent half an hour with the Professor and returning to the farm, this gives him nine hours to get to the rendezvous. A commercial liner takes 8 hours to fly from Washington to Paris at 950 km/h, and a smaller plane like he used would top out at 750 km/h. He doesn't have enough time. [He's not in Washington. He's in France.]
Edit Corrected by MoonFaery
In the beginning of the film, Matt Damon (Jason Bourne) is rescued by a fishing vessel. He is taken on board and examined by the ship's doctor/captain. As he is cutting away Bourne's wet suit, there are two bloody bullet holes in his back - but no holes on the wet suit that he had just cut away. [Wetsuits are made of a highly elastic fabric and therefore are unlikely to show bullet holes in a cursory examination. You would have to look very closely to see small slits caused by the bullets which would be tightly closed by the rubberized material.]
Edit Time
When Conklin is on the bridge for his meeting with Jason, he removes his coat over his shoulders and reveals a vest underneath. When the shot is changed to Jason's binoculars, he is wearing no vest and just the blue shirt shows. [Watch again more closely and you will see that he has a blazer on underneath and that he pauses as he takes off the overcoat to take off the blazer at the same time.]
Edit
During the car chase scene, one of the motorcycle police falls off his bike, and his bike slides into a white BMW. When the shot changes, it is now a blue BMW. [The BMW is the same car, it looks different from a different angle because of lighting.]
Edit Time
When the sniper is disassembling his rifle after he kills Wombosi, he takes a silencer off of his rifle. But when he takes it off he just slides it off the length of the barrel instead of taking it off the tip of the barrel, that means that the silencer wouldn't work because it has to catch the gasses coming out of the end of the barrel. How can it catch those gasses when it's not on the end of the barrel? [The suppressor shrouds the barrel, but extends slightly beyond it. I imagine that the design re-directs the gasses back into the tube for the baffles to slow down to subsonic speeds.]
Edit Corrected by J I Cohen
Damon rides in a train from France to Switzerland. It is the famous french high speed train TGV. As far as I know it is only operating in France. [According to www.tgv.com, you can go from Marseille to Zurich using this train.]
Edit Corrected by Dr Wilson
In the farmhouse shooting Damon shoots the assassin with a shotgun from a pretty big distance. Due to the dispersion of the little lead bullets the injury should not that bad as it is shown. [Shotgun ammunition comes in varying types, ranging from the traditional "little lead bullets" through larger and larger pellets and finally arriving at single slug ammunition. A single slug (or some of the larger pellets) could easily do the damage shown at the range in question.]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker
Jason first sees Marie inside the US embassy before he meets her out back. Marie was not going to the USA and she wasn't a citizen of the US, so why was she in the US embassy trying to take care of her student visa and passport problems? [Marie is trying to get to America. If you watch the behind the scenes on the DVD it's mentioned. So if she's trying to get to America she would have to get a visa from the embassy.]
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