Remake of the 1988 Bourne Identity, shot in Prag by American director Doug Limon on the basis of the Robert Ludlum novel, with Matt Damon as Jason Bourne and German actress Franka Potente. Review based on the DVD release and a copy of the script.

A young man with a gunshot wound is found floating in the sea by fishermen. The ship's doctor saves his life and discovers an intriguing laser device hidden under the man's skin. When activated, the device projects a red beam with a number - a Swiss numbered account. The man (Matt Damon) cannot remember anything about who he is and why he was in the sea. He decides to go to Switzerland to investigate this myserious account.

We were able to acquire a copy of the original script ('Paris Draft: 9/20/00') where the screenwriter's view of Swiss banks as sort of exclusive temples of privacy is clearly expressed. The Zurich financial district is upscale and uptight. When he enters the Gemeinschaft bank, just one of many elegant fortresses on this street, Bourne looks very out of place. He goes down tot he bank safety deposit viewing room, a sterile and kind of odd place, but providing total privacy, and meets with Mr Apfel, an anal Zurich banker. These false conceptions clearly suggests that, unlike Robert Ludlum, screenwriter Tony Gilroy has never set foot in a real Swiss bank.

Jason Bourne enters the bank's lobby. He doesn't look like a client of a Swiss private bank. Too young, dishevelled because he spent the last night on a bank in the street and lacking self confidence, the bank's female huissière immediately picks him out as somebody who has no business here. Very surly, she asks him what he wants. Bourne writes down his account number and she shows him up without looking at the number. In a real bank she would normally become a bit better mannered when she realized Bourne is a numbered account client - one of the bank's larger clients.

The bank safe deposit vault is not extremely realistic but impressive enough. Bourne walks into a dark lobby with architectural lights and sees half a dozen men who are waiting with their hands crossed and their backs against the wall. They look like bouncers at the entrance of some fashionable night clubs and not like Swiss bank huissiers. The ambiance is one of latent hostility towards Bourne.

The fancy palm reader where Bourne only needs to put his palm on a screen to get identified is yet unheard of in Switzerland. We might also wonder how a professional spy who stores a dozen passports each with a different identity in his safe deposit box could allow his palm and finger prints to be taken. In the business of safe deposit boxes, clients like a security system that is plain and transparent. With an electronic system, the client can always wonder whether a skilled hacker could break into the system and get access to his account, whereas with a lock and key, people tend to assume it's not possible. Whatever the reason, Swiss banks uses locks and keys, never biometrics.

Bourne's safe deposit box is retrieved by one of the huissiers. It has a fancy design never actually seen in a real Swiss bank. Usually the client will go himself and turn his key or punch his code in while the banker does the same, to ensure that nobody can peek inside his box between the vault and the consultation booth. But in some cases the client leaves his key in separate secure storage at the bank so that the huissier can retrieve the key once the client has been identified, and then retrieve the box. In this case Bourne would not need to go into the vault.

Bourne is left in a private consultation booth that looks rather authentic, save for the computer printer and the telephone and fax machine. Usually such booths in Swiss banks have scissors to let people cut the coupons on their bearer bonds, sometimes also paper clips to help counting the cash. The fax machine does not make sense here.

Bourne's bank box does have a regular bank box size though. Bourne opens it and finds his American passport, his French Carte de Résident and Carte de médecine du travail, a French driving license, a couple pocket knives, a banknote clip, a few intriguing pens, an Air France airmiles pass, a Swiss watch, a USB key and no less than seven credit cards. He sees that the box has a hidden compartment under the false bottom. There, he finds a large amount of cash in French francs, US dollars, Italian liras and German marks. On top is a black SIG SP2022 semi-automatic handgun, a Swiss-made weapon used by both police forces and mafias worldwide. An appropriate choice for a spy.

A number of Brazilian, French, Russian and other passports all with his pictures but different identities, Nicolas Lemanissier, Paul Kat, John Michael Kane, Foma Kiniaev and other we cannot see. The Russian passport does not withstand close inspection, the Cyrillic script is nonsense and does not correspond to the Roman script name. But the passports look good otherwise.

This bank scene is much sexier than in the original Bourne Identity, thanks to the intriguing spy paraphernalia in the bank box. The box in the original movie only contains a bank statement, whereas here we not only learn Bourne's name and that he has much cash, but also that he certainly is up to no good.

Although this is a very good movie that features Swiss account as a central feature, there is one large and unexpected disappointment. The movie was not made in Switzerland but in the Czech Republic, and this shows for anybody who has ever visited Zurich. Of course, large details such as the trademark blue Zurich tramways and the cars' licence plates are rather realistic, but Prag's buildings are taller than those in Zurich, the cars seen in the streets rather different and the fake snow on the streets all contribute to make this sequence look fake.

We did make a sinister discovery when investigating which Prag building was used to shoot the bank's exteriors. There can be no doubt that it was the infamous Peckuv Palace on Politickych veznu 20, just opposite Prag's Opera House. This was the headquarters of the Gestapo in Prag during WWII and many Czechs were tortured and murdered in the building.