The fights in 'Bourne' are fast, nasty, and very realistic while still being entertaining for the layman. As someone who has trained in martial arts for over 10 years, unrealistic fight scenes are a pet peeve. As for realism, most of the action scenes are believable, no super-gadgets are to be seen, no incredibly lovely models fall madly in bed with Bourne, and the hero shows definite signs of physical vulnerability despite a very high level of training and competance. I view any movie adaptation as an interpretation of the book rather than a translation from words to pictures anyway. As I remember, I liked the book, and I definitely like this movie. There are probably several things that work in the book that would either be boring and take too much screen time to explain, or would be viewed as cliche to modern screen audiences. To those who have moaned about the incompatibility of the book and the movie, seek help. We never find out about what is in the case in 'Ronin' and I can live without some information being filled in about Bourne's past. If you can't handle a little of that, you probably should stick to Disney films or TV's Scooby Doo where everything is explained in the end. I for one, do not need to have everything spelled out since in many cases this smacks of unreality in the first place the essence of espionage is drawing conclusions from very sketchy information.

Some people have complained about being confused by the movie.

The focus is entirely upon Bourne and how he is to deal with having no memory of his past, being hunted without knowing why. While 'Bourne' does not have a particularly deep plot, it is consistent and focused. Most of the crap that passes for an espionage film has no plot or reason for existing other than to meet a quota of explosions and cleavage in order to draw the summer action film crowd. Besides 'The Bourne Identity,' 'Ronin' is the only other recent spy movie I can think of that didn't feature skydiving, bungie jumping, skiing downhill while shooting innumerable bad guys, laser pens, cars with ejection seats, or silicone breasted women with names you'd be vaguely embarrassed to say in front of your mother. I have grown extremely tired of the typical formula spy film like Bond, or the juvenile stunt exhibition 'Triple X.' There have been a bare handful of spy films that feature relatively realistic spy thrillers, especially recently with a concentration on spectacular movies that have less substance than cotton candy.

The bourne identity book series