| “ | I can tell you the license plate numbers of all six cars outside. I can tell you that our waitress is left-handed and the guy sitting up at the counter weighs two hundred fifteen pounds and knows how to handle himself. I know the best place to look for a gun is the cab or the gray truck outside, and at this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Now why would I know that? How can I know that and not know who I am? | „ |
| ~ Jason Bourne |
Jason Charles Bourne (real name: David Webb) is the main protagonist of the Bourne novels and movie franchise. He is a former operative of the CIA group Treadstone who defected after he was sent to assassinate Nykwana Wombosi, but could not bring himself to do so with his children present. Naturally, the CIA considered this a betrayal and attempted to kill him. Shot twice in the back, Bourne wakes up with no memory of who he is, and he goes on a mission to piece his memory back together.
He is portrayed in the movies by Matt Damon.
Story
The Bourne Identity
Originally working for Treadstone, Jason first appears floating in the Mediterranean sea unconscious & barely alive. He is rescued by a group of Italian fishermen, is treated for his gunshot wounds on his back, & has a tiny projector removed from his hip that displays a Swiss bank account number. When Bourne wakes up & is questioned about it, he is revealed to have amnesia who has not only forgotten his last moments but his identity and precious life as well. Back in Langley, Danny Zorn reports to Bourne's boss Alexander Conklin that he failed to kill Wombosi & he immediately begins to track him down. Meanwhile Bourne makes his way to Zurich where he accesses his bank account using the numbers from the projector & finds his supposed passport with the name: Jason Bourne. He then proceeds to take his belongings only to discover multiple other passports with different names with his picture, money in different currencies, & a pistol. Bourne takes his belongings except the gun & proceeds to leave Zurich. Bourne is then tracked by the Zurich police (after accidentally knocking down two cops in self-defense at a park) & manages to lose them by hiding at the American consulate. Bourne proceeds to escape the consulate when security also tries to apprehend him & loses them as well. On his way, he meets Marie Kreutz who is in desperate need of money, & offers her $20,000 to take him to Paris. Meanwhile Conklin learns of Bourne's whereabouts in Zurich & sends three assets: Castel, Manheim, & The Professor to track Bourne & kill their fellow colleague.
Bourne & Marie arrive at Bourne's apartment where he is recognized by the landlord & Bourne slowly tries to recall what exactly happened 2 weeks ago. Castel then shortly arrives, kills the landlord, & proceeds to kill Bourne but fails. Shortly thereafter, he commits suicide by jumping down a window when Bourne unsuccessfully tries to interrogate him. Bourne & Marie flee the apartment but Bourne is determined to stay in Paris & figure put why people are trying to kill him. Throughout the movie, using various leads, Bourne slowly begins to realize he is a government assassin & is determined to leave his past life behind him. The Professor manages to track down Bourne at Marie's stepbrother's remote countryhouse & they engage in a brief gunfight which ends when Bourne mortally wounds the Professor. Before he dies, he briefly reveals to Bourne their mutual connection to Treadstone just before he dies from his wounds.
Bourne calls Conklin using the Professor's cellphone & arranges a meeting with him back in Paris. Bourne follows Conklin into a Treadstone safehouse & confronts him. Conklin, who is unaware of Bourne's amnesia, grills him for failing to kill Wombosi & Bourne then begins to remember how he sneaked on to Wombosi's yacht & was about to shoot him but was unable to kill him in front of his own children. Bourne tried to leave but was followed by Wombosi who shot him & left him for dead in the sea. Bourne, having regret being a killer, angrily tells Conklin that he is leaving Treadstone & warns him not to follow him. He knocks Conklin unconscious after he calls for backup & leaves Nicky Parsons (a logistics coordinator) unharmed. After dispatching several agents, Bourne escapes the safehouse before Conklin makes one last attempt to find him & kill him. However, Conklin is himself killed when Mannheim the last remaining asset shoots him dead in the streets on behalf of Ward Abbott's orders.
Shortly after this Abbott reports to the Oversight Senate Committee in Washington D.C where he announces the termination of Treadstone & proceeds to introduce the committee to Operation Blackbriar. Sometime later, Bourne reunites with Marie in Greece after she opens up her own scooter store/cafe.
The Bourne Supremacy
Two years after the events of the first film, Bourne & Marie quietly live in hiding from the CIA in India. Meanwhile in Berlin, Pamela Landy, a CIA deputy director arranges a deal with a Russian informant who is willing to give classified documents in exchange for $3 million. However, Kirill a corrupt Russian Secret Service agent intervenes by cutting the power to the building, kills Landy's officer & the informant, steals the files & the money, & frames Bourne for the theft/murder. Kirill meets up with Yuri Gretcov, an oil magnate to whom he gives him the files & proceeds to go to India & kill Bourne.
Bourne however determines Kirill to be a threat (while mistaking him for a Treadstone operative) & tries to flee with Marie. Kirill goes after them & gets a clear shot of the back of the car. However, due to not seeing the seat change between Bourne & Marie he kills her by mistake & thinks Bourne is dead. Bourne shortly manages to escape undetected, takes his belongings with several passports & money & makes his way to Naples, Italy In Langley, Landy learns that the planted fingerprints belong to Bourne & begins to question Ward Abbott about operation Treadstone in which he briefly reveals it to be a blacks ops assassination program. While he admits at having Conklin killed for his failure at finding Bourne, he claims not to know where Bourne is himself. Landy reveals that seven years ago, $20 million from stolen CIA funds disappeared in a money transference over Moscow. Vladimir Neski, a Russian politician was about to identity the thief when he was presumably killed by his wife.
Bourne arrives in Naples and intentionally uses his original passport to alert the CIA of his presence. He is briefly held in custody by a CIA agent & an Italian police officer before he knocks them both unconscious, clones the agent's SIM card on to his phone & escapes. He then listens to Landy's call where he learns her name & phone number & also learns that he is suspected of murdering Landy's officer & stealing the money & files. Bourne later arrives in Munich, Germany & locates the other remaining Treadstone operative, Jarda who tells him that Treadstone has been abandoned following Conklin's death & taunts him by the fact that only him & Bourne are the last Treadstone assets. Bourne is forced to kill Jarda in self-defense when he tries to kill him before a CIA backup team arrives & later dispatches the team by blowing up the house. Bourne makes his way to Berlin where he follows Landy into a CIA safehouse & arranges a meeting Landy & Nicky Parsons via phone at Alexanderplatz. He avoids dection from Landy & her team, then captures Nicky & interrogates her. He learns from her that Abbott, not Conklin, was the head of Treadstone, and also remembers his first mission in Berlin which Nicky knows nothing about.
While hearing Bourne's conversation via Nicky's transmitter, Landy begins to suspect Bourne is being framed & to the surprise of both Abbott & Landy, Bourne lets Nicky go unharmed & heads to the Becker hotel where the Neskis were killed. Abbott kills Danny Zorn when the latter also suspects Bourne's innocence, thus proving his involvement in a conspiracy. Bourne arrives at the hotel inadvertently attracting the attention of the Berlin police & Pamela Landy & recalls more of his mission: Bourne was sent to Berlin to kill Neski on Conklin's orders but was forced to kill her wife as well when she unexpectedly came to the room, thus made it look like a murder-suicide. Bourne is forced to leave the hotel when the police & Landy's team arrive & barely manages to escape. Landy then realizes that Bourne was responsible for the Neski murders & then goes to confront Abbott when the police find Zorn's body.
Bourne arrives & sneaks into Abbott's hotel room & records an incriminating conversation between Gretcov & Abbott implicating them in the theft of the $20 million & after the phone call confronts him, getting him to confess the theft of the money, his involvement in the deaths of the CIA officer & the informant, & the order he gave to Kirill to have Bourne assassinated. Had Bourne died, the CIA would've been gone on a wild goose chase and Abbott & Gretcov would've covered their tracks indefinitely. Landy arrives at Abbott's hotel room after Bourne leaves & also confronts him with Abbott not regretting his actions. He then commits suicide in front of Landy using Bourne's handgun. Bourne arrives in Moscow alerting the Russian police & Kirill, and after being wounded in the shoulder engages them in a high speed chase through the streets. The chase ends when Bourne rams his stolen taxi on to Kirill's vehicle inside a tunnel & seeing him critically injured, walks away. Landy then has Gretcov arrested for the theft of the $20 million and conspiracy with Ward Abbott using Bourne's evidence. Bourne himself arrives at Irene Neski's (Vladimir Neski's daughter) apartment where confesses to the murder of her parents and apologizes before leaving.
Sometime later, Bourne arrives in New York & calls Landy telling her he knows she is still trying to find him. Landy thanks Bourne for Abbott's confession & also reveals his real name: David Webb & telling him he was born on 4-15-71 in Nixa, Missouri. Landy offers Bourne a chance to return to the CIA but he declines & vanishes onto a New York crowd.
The Bourne Ultimatum
The movie begins immediately after Bourne apologizes to Irena Neski, daughter of Vladimir Neski, who was Bourne's first target. Wounded from The Bourne Supremacy car chase, Jason Bourne is still evading the Moscow police. Cornered by two officers while breaking into a medical clinic to treat his wounds, Bourne overpowers the officers, knocking one out, while holding the second at gunpoint. He leaves them alive as he escapes.
Six weeks later, Simon Ross, a security correspondent for The Guardian, meets with Neal Daniels, the Madrid CIA station chief, in Turin, to discuss Treadstone. Bourne goes to Paris to tell Marie's brother, Martin, of her death, then heads to London. Bourne arranges to meet Ross in London at the south entrance of Waterloo Station. Ross, however, is under surveillance by ECHELON after mentioning "Operation Blackbriar" in a phone call to his editor, thus alerting New York deputy director Noah Vosen. Vosen alerts his staff to find out any information on Ross, believing that Operation Blackbriar has been compromised.
After receiving a call from Bourne, Ross takes a taxi to Waterloo Station. At the station, Bourne sees CIA officers following Ross and places a prepaid mobile phone on him. Through it, Bourne instructs him how to dodge the station's surveillance. However, Vosen orders an assassin, Paz, to kill Ross and his source. Vosen's team identifies Bourne on a security camera and recognizes him as the original Treadstone assassin, and assumes he is Ross's source. While Paz gets into position with a sniper rifle, Bourne tells Ross to remain hidden, but Ross panics and steps out into the open, giving Paz a clear kill shot. In the chaos, Bourne grabs Ross's notes which reveal Ross's source as Daniels.
Deputy Director Pamela Landy is asked to help capture Bourne. With Landy's help, Vosen and his team also determine that Daniels is Ross' source. They send a team to Daniels' office in Madrid, but Bourne arrives first, finding one photograph in an otherwise empty safe as Daniels has already left. Bourne attacks the CIA team members when they enter the office. Right after Bourne secures the room, Nicky Parsons then enters it unexpectedly, who tells Bourne that she was reassigned to Madrid after Berlin, and that Daniels has fled to Tangier. She helps him escape the CIA reinforcements by telling Vosen that Bourne had already left the office. While in Tangier, they realize the CIA has sent assassin Desh Bouksani to eliminate Daniels. Nicky uses her official clearance access to send Desh a message, telling him to meet her for a new phone, thus allowing Bourne to follow Desh to his target. When Vosen realizes Nicky's deceit he orders Desh to kill Nicky and Bourne after terminating Daniels. Landy is outraged at Vosen's willingness to indiscriminately kill CIA personnel and quits the operation.
Bourne follows Desh and is unable to save Daniels, who dies from a car bomb. When Desh returns for Nicky, Bourne outruns the Tangier police and fights Desh, eventually strangling him with a towel. Bourne has Nicky deceive the CIA that the both of them are dead to give each of them a head start at disappearing. Bourne then puts Nicky on a bus with the advice that, "It gets easier" (Referring to blending in and disappearing). At the Tangier morgue, Bourne examines Daniels' charred papers and finds the address of the CIA substation in New York city. Bourne takes a flight to New York and deliberately uses a passport that alerts Landy to his presence. Bourne calls Landy while observing her and Vosen from across the street then sends a text message to Landy to arrange a meeting. Vosen and his team intercept the message and follow Landy as she leaves the building. However, the meeting is simply a diversion to allow Bourne to enter Vosen's office and steal the Blackbriar documents.
Vosen recognizes the diversion after receiving a phone call from Bourne in which he states he is in Vosen's office. Vosen frantically orders CIA officers back to his office to capture Bourne. Bourne escapes and enters into a car chase with CIA officers and Paz. The chase ends with a crash in which Paz is seen injured but alive. Bourne, unharmed, aim his gun at him but spares his life and walks away.
Just outside the Treadstone facility, Bourne meets Landy and gives her the stolen documents from Vosen's office before entering the building. On his way back to his office, Vosen eventually realizes Landy gave Bourne an address in code when Landy told Bourne his date of birth. Vosen races to the facility where Landy finishes faxing away the Blackbriar documents that Bourne stole and walks away. Inside, Bourne meets Dr. Albert Hirsch, who ran Treadstone's psychological conditioning program. With his help, Bourne remembers that, as Captain David Webb, he volunteered for the program and killed a man in cold blood to show his commitment to the program. Horrified by the memory of what he did to complete his conditioning and to assume the Jason Bourne identity, he tells Hirsch, "I remember everything. I'm no longer Jason Bourne."
CIA officers appear and chase after Bourne, but he fleas to the rooftop. Paz reaches first and holds Bourne at gunpoint. He demands to know why Bourne spared his life. "Do you even know why you have to kill me? Look at us. Look at what they make you give," says Bourne, repeating the dying words from The Professor. Paz lowers his weapon, but Vosen appears and fires at Bourne just as he jumps from the roof into the East River below.
Some time later, Nicky sees a news report noting the exposure of Blackbriar, the arrests of Hirsch and Vosen, that Ezra Kramer is the subject of a United States Senate hearing regarding his conduct, and that David Webb was shot and fell into the East River but his body was not recovered, even after a three-day search. In the final moments of the film Bourne is shown swimming in the East River, escaping his pursuers.
The Bourne Legacy
While Jason Bourne does not appear in the film. Various pictures of him are shown via news reports as well as in his Treadstone files & his name is mentioned several times. Also, in the film he is replaced as the main protagonist by Aaron Cross, a new super assassin working for Operation Outcome (a successor of Operation Treadstone).
Jason Bourne
Several years after his disappearance at the conclusion of The Bourne Ultimatum, Jason Bourne unexpectedly resurfaces at a time when the world is faced with unprecedented instability. At the same time, a new program, Ironhand, has been created to hunt him down while he is still trying to find all the answers to his past and family.
Abilities
As a CIA operative and enhanced Treadstone asset, Jason Bourne posses a variety of skills. He is very adept in hand-to-hand combat, demonstrated throughout the films as he defeated every single opponent he faced during physical combat. Bourne shows extensive knowledge in the use and functionality of any fire weapon. In The Bourne Identity he is even seen using two different-class pistols, while handling one of them upside down. Onscreen and in the novels he has demonstrated he can disassemble a handgun in seconds. His knowledge in physical combat and weaponry is so extensive, to the point that he is capable of using virtually any object as a weapon, for example: He used a pen against Castel, which was using a knife, in The Bourne Identity, Bourne used a magazine to bring down Jarda and to blow up Jarda's home in The Bourne Supremacy, he also used a book to fight against Desh in The Bourne Ultimatum. His training and knowledge proves to work perfectly for self-preservation, however despite his array of near-superhuman abilities, they are not enough to protect those around him. Proof of this is how he could not avoid Marie and Ross from getting killed during the events of The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum respectively.
