Bourne Identity:
[spoiler]An unconscious man is rescued from the Med by a trawler. He needs treatment for a gunshot wound as well as exposure. Recovering, he realises he has forgotten who he is or how he ended up in the drink. He can however speak several languages, read nautical charts and tie knots like a sailor. During the surgery, the medic excavated an implant from his hip which has the details of a Swiss bank account.
Over the course of several adventures is the company of a woman called Marie, he comes to realise that he is a ruthlessly well trained assassin who was nearly killed when a hit on an African dictator went wrong (he would have had to kill the target’s young kids, and hesitated). It transpires that he is part of a CIA programme called Treadstone, which has trained a number of these super-assassins and placed them strategically around Europe (and presumably, the world). Bourne was the Paris agent. Julia Stiles is the local Paris contact handling logistics etc. for Bourne. The CIA doesn’t know why the hit on the dictator failed, or why Bourne is not getting in contact, so they do the logical thing and send other Treadstone agents to kill him. He kills both the Madrid and London agents. Talking to the dying London agent, Bourne learns that they both suffer persistent headaches, persumably a by-product of whatever training they went through to become such finely honed killing mahines. Finally, the more senior of the two CIA suits masterminding this (Brian Cox) decides to cut his losses and has the Rome Treadstone agent kill the junior CIA suit (Chris Cooper). This leaves Bourne and Marie free to disappear and live a happy life off-grid.[/spoiler]
Bourne Supremacy.
[spoiler]We open on two men attempting to conduct a clandestine deal in Berlin and getting murdered for their trouble. Meantime, Bourne and Marie are in Goa when Bourne’s highly tuned assassin-dar spots a killer on their tail. They attempt to flee: Marie takes a bullet meant for Bourne and dies; Bourne gets away. He believes it was the CIA and heads off to find revenge. Back in Berlin, the CIA’s investigations, led by Joan Allen, have found a fingerprint - Bourne’s.
Bourne keeps flashing back to his first mission when he killed a modernising Russian politician, and his wife who wasn’t supposed to be there. Interrogating Julia Stiles, who the CIA brought to Berlin because she knew Bourne, he learns that this was not his first official mission. It transpires that Chris Cooper and Brian Cox had a tasty little sideline hiring out the CIA’s super-assassins and this was one such hit. Now the Russian’s behind that illicit hit are trying to destroy the evidence and frame Bourne in the process. Bourne exposes Brian Cox, who has the good manners to kill himself. He travels to Russia to personally apologise ot the daughter of the two Russians he killed, and in doing so defeats - but chooses not to kill - the Russian assassin who killed Marie. In the course of all this, he reaches an uneasy truce with Joan Allen.[/spoiler]
Bourne Ultimatum
[spoiler]Journeying back from Russia, Bourne reads in the Guardian of a CIA programme called Treadstone. Shocked, he attempts to contact the journalist. They meet in Waterloo Station but the CIA are also after the journalist to find out his source. They believe it might be Bourne. Ed Murrow, in charge of an operation called Blackbriar, orders the killing of both. The ruthlessly trained assassin on the spot only succeeds in killing the journalist. The uproar this causes brings Joan Allen back to investigate/oversee Blackbriar. It later transpires that Murrow and his boss have set her up to take the fall.
Meanwhile, Bourne goes in search of the journalist’s source, a CIA operative in Madrid. Breaking in to his office he meets Julia Stiles. She decides not to turn him in and they flee together to Morocco, chasing the source. A Treadstone assassin on the trail of the source succeeds in killing the source but fails - fatally - to kill Bourne. As Stiles is now compromised with the CIA, they separate and she moves into a life on the run. But not before revealing that she knew - and was in a relationship with - Bourne pre-amnesia.
Bourne goes to New York to take the fight to Treadstone. He successfully steals incriminating papers which he delivers to Joan Allen. However, he is forced to confront his past in an encounter with one of the psychologists who helped condition/brainwash him. Flashbacks reveal that Bourne volunteered for this programme, and that he was tested by being asked to kill a hooded man without being given any details of why he should do so. He passed the test with barely a hesitation. In the present, Bourne defeats but does not kill the Treadstone agent from Waterloo - later, this agent declines to kill Bourne when give the chance. Ed Murrow does get a shot off, however, and the film ends with a wounded Bourne floating in water, just as the first film began - until, at the last second, he starts to swim.[/spoiler]
Bourne Legacy
A rising theme throughout the first movies is the growing interest of Congress into these illegal CIA killing programmes. Legacy deals with the fallout of these investigations, as Edward Norton masterminds a scheme to kill all the agents and support personnel associated with Treadstone, Blackbriar and various other programmes. Jeremy Renner is another agent (Aaron someone) who narrowly escapes his assassination and then outruns his pursuers. In Legacy, the “how to make people ruthless assassins” programme has gone from old fashioned brainwashing to mind- and body-altering medications.
