The Rewatchables - ‘The Bourne Identity’ With Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan

Episode Date: December 23, 2020

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan have forgotten everything about this podcast and must discover its true identity by rewatching ‘The Bourne Identity,’ starring Matt Damon, Franka Potente, and Chris Cooper. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network where Chris Ryan has a weekly MBA show now called The Answer. It's on Ringer MBA. You can hear it every Friday. And he ascends from the clouds with super smart basketball takes. It's our weekend review show. Little like Big Shot Bob Lee way back in the day, how he would just parachute from the clouds and ESPN and with the sage take. It's more like Nicholas Fane from Saturday Night Live where I just put my own spin on this week. headlines.

What? No, you can't do that. So you can hear that. We also got TV concierge going again. If you love pop culture, that's at least three times a week, breaking down the latest hit TV stuff. And then I'm on the Ringer Dish podcast every Wednesday night recapping the challenge with my old friend Dave Jacoby.

There's no reason for it at all other than I just missed Dave Jacoby. Coming up, you can never go back to this car. The Born Identity is next. I'll give you $10,000 to drive me to Paris. I can't remember anything that happened before two weeks ago. Dreamed by the government. You've got a black ops agent who's off the reservation. Talk to disappear.

I don't even know who I'm hiding from. I've got to figure this out. Born to survive. You stop right there. On June 14th, Matt Damon. What's not going to stop? Is Jason Bourne? What are you going to do?

I'm full of surprises. Born Identity rated PG-13 at Theaters Friday, June 14th. All right, Chris Ryan is here. Going old school as we had toward the end of 2020. Coming off, the most polarizing movie, I think we've ever done, Country Strong. People just couldn't believe we did it. I stand by. I hadn't heard about that.

Would you guys get some feedback? Yeah, apparently there was some feedback. I'm going to start here with the Bourne identity, which came out in 2002 and was a hit movie and spawned 200,000 sequels. At the end of this movie, did Jason Bourne create NBA player empowerment? He was kind of more of like, I don't know, like he had like the no name on the back of the jersey kind of thing. Yeah. Hired gun. A little like Kauai, right?

He just leaves in the end. He's like, I'm out. I'm working for myself. So is that why he's like, he's like starts in Marseille, but he really needs to be in Paris? It's like the San Diego, LA thing. Yeah, he doesn't want a team. I think it all leads to the decision. I think LeBron saw the decision and decided about all stuff after Jason Bourne. So we'll start here. Is the amnesia just the best plot device ever? Can you have a better plot device for an action movie?

Oh, it's so cinematic, watching somebody try and figure out who they are. And those opening scenes of this movie, once he gets to the safety deposit box in the Swiss bank, and I have a lot of questions about Swiss banks that I want to ask you. I'm ready. When he goes through that and it's essentially his past with all the passports and all the money and the gun, the hair on your arm stands up. You're just like, I'm all in. Whatever happens to this guy, I already know he can beat up cops in a park. Yeah. But now he is. Who is he, Jason Bourne, John Michael Cain, Philippe, or whatever his Brazilian name was. And you're completely locked in. I had this later. I know we're going to go into it most rewatchable scenes. Anytime somebody goes to a really fancy bank to open a security deposit box, I think the odds of the scene working and being gripping are 100%. There's nobody's ever like fuck that scene up.

Is there ever like a normal person in a Swiss bank? It's always an assassin on the run. who's left a dead drop there. It's true. And there's never anybody normal working at the bank either, but I was thinking best amnesia movies ever. I actually think this is the best one.

I've total recall second. While you were sleeping third, memento fourth, which is a reverse amnesia movie almost. And then I really like 50 first dates. I'm not going to apologize. I like the Drew Barrymore, Adam Sandler combo.

I think they're great. But this is a plot. I remember even in general hospital, When I used to watch that in the early 80s, they had a whole amnesia thing. And it's like, it never doesn't work. Yeah, I throw spellbound in there, the Hitchcock movie with Gregory Peck. It's just an incredible trope. It would be fun.

That would have been, remember when we were doing when we could all hang out together and we could do these crazy videos that we would spend way too much time on? And the amnesia one would have been a good one for the NBA, where somebody just wakes up and wake, LeBron's a Laker? Somebody wakes up and they're just like, This guy, John Wall, seems like a great trade. His takes her four years old. Matt Damon needed this.

And we've talked about Damon a few times because we've done Goodwill Hunting. We've done rounders. We've done talented Mr. Ripley. I think we did Oceans 11. We did The Departed. And we did The Martians. So he's rising up the rankings for most rewatchable appearances. But 97 and 99.

he has goodwill hunting becomes a famous saving private iran rounders dogman talent to mr rippley but then it kind of dips mm-hmm legend of bagger vance really bad i even had him on a podcast making fun of his golf swing he basically had three weeks to learn how to play golf which um put him on par with like people at the los felice part nine just hacking it hitting shots into the street the pitch and play yeah it probably puts them on par with me now i've been playing for like four years all the pretty horses um a pretty legendary bomb for what people thought. And according to him, the version, the Billy Bob Thornton,

director's cut of all the pretty horses, is the best movie he ever made. But it's lost the time. Jay and Silent Bob strike back, which people just didn't like that much. And I think people were disappointed by. And then Ocean's 11, what was notable about that

was it felt like he wasn't on the same level as Clooney and Pitt. It felt like Clooney and Pitt were the giant stars in that movie, And then Damon was like the third star, but not on the level of those two guys because those guys were bigger stars than them. Then he did Jerry, which was a little bit of an indie movie. But I think the Ocean's 11 piece is instructive.

Because when you watch that movie, it's weird that Damon's almost like a character actor in it. And it's really built around the star power of Clooney and Pitt. You don't usually see A plus list actors make choices like that. If they're going to be in a movie like that, it's like, hey, I need the same kind of star power frequency that these dudes had. but he didn't care, but then he finally gets it with the born identity. Yeah, I mean, the genius of the Oceans movies is it treats almost every single character as if they are the star of the movie in the moment that they're in the movie, but then they're able to seamlessly blend into the background of other scenes or be the fifth guy in another scene.

Right. So then this comes out, and he's basically borrowing the cruise mission impossible blueprint, although as we're doing, we'll talk about in the research, wasn't clear if there was ever going to be a sequel to this one. But I think he realized that he's somebody that I think has always been really smart about his career. The one, you know, he did like the Grissom movie. He did, he wrote his own movie. He did rounders, like the gritty, you know, almost like a sports movie.

And talented Mr. Ripley is like my, I need to show I can act. He did the courage under fire where he lost a shitload of weight. And he was missing that awesome action movie. And I think he realized it. And you look back at, we're going to talk. talk about what a fucking disaster the shoot was and the production and all that stuff. But this basically was the much higher-end version of John Wick that sets up John Wick taken some of the Mission Impossible sequels. I feel like, don't you feel like this was a

more influential movie than maybe we give it credit for? Hugely. It's a hugely influential movie. I mean, it went on to like, I think, really basically set the tone for action movies in the first decade of the 2000s. And the reason why I think it's successful is some of the same reasons why I think Matt Damon is successful is that Damon's taste and sensibility is clearly character-driven smaller pieces. I mean, that's why he shows up in a smaller role in Ocean's 11. It's why he continues to make movies with people like Gus Van Sant and weird Steven Soderberg movies like informant over the course of his career. But what him and Doug Lyman do here is essentially Trojan Horse

in before sunrise into an action movie. and these are guys that are like basically shaped by the indie movie movement of the mid to late 80s to the mid to late 90s. And they probably, that's what they want to make. Those are the things that draw are interesting to them, as are really big popcorn, entertainment, action and thriller movies. And they found the perfect vehicle, the small red vehicle that Marie drives to merge the two of these things. They just basically Trojan horse before sunrise. into an action movie. And they definitely borrow from Run Lola Run because they hired the star of Run Lola Run.

Then they borrowed from Ronan, too. I think it has a little bit of that Ronan feel of where in a foreign country, stuff's happening and unfolding. People have to figure stuff out in the fly and it has a certain pace to it. But I think it probably does it better than both of those movies in a bunch of different ways. One of the things that's just great about this movie is when you have like espionage or action or whatever and you're in a weird country. They're pretending they're in Switzerland and Paris.

They really shoot a lot of this in Prague. Yeah. But they went to Prague, went to Prague. In general, it's always good. It's always good when they're in the foreign country because I even think, you know, like taken, it really helps taken that he has to like, you know, go to go to France and then deal with these Albanian terrorists.

And it's like a road game, you know, versus where if it's in LA or New York, it just doesn't feel like it has the same weight. Yeah, I mean, I think one thing I wanted to chat with you a little bit about was like, so I think I, if I remember correctly, this came out in 2002, and I'm pretty positive I saw this twice opening weekend.

I think I saw it once, and I was so blown away by how different it felt. And if you were coming out of the 90s, and you know, you had some like pretty cool, gritty, grittier movies like Die Hard with a Vengeance and Point Bray break has got like a lot of handheld kind of like kinetic feeling. But for the most part, the 90s action movies were like James Cameron, Michael Bay,

like these kind of big, huge, glossy, pushing the boundaries of believability action movies. True. Like Jamie Lee Curtis hanging off Arnold's hand on a helicopter with bad C.G. A missile hitting a bridge while a truck is driving across it or like, you know, the rock. That was like an awesome action movie from the night's. But then you get to BORN, and everything in it feels so real. And the way that Lyman shoots it and then the way that Greengrass would subsequently shoot the sequels, it's just basically like, let's take documentary filmmaking and apply it to a blockbuster movie.

Well, I think you and I were, even though we didn't know each other, there are two elements that we're in on. One was Damon. I think all of us love Damon, even though he was on a little bit of a cold streak. It was the pedigree. Yeah. You knew he wasn't going away. And then Doug Lyman, who did Swingers and then Go, which is a movie that does not have legs for whatever reason.

When we did the rewatchable's 1999, little mini podcast for Luminary, we talked about Go a little bit as a movie that I don't really understand why it does not have the legs, but felt like a big deal in 1999. It had a lot of current stars, and it had the director from Swingers, and it had a real vibe to it. And you go back and you think all the people in that movie, it was really cool. So I think all of us were like waiting for his next movie. And then the born, the born books were something like, you know, our dad's read. Yeah. And, you know, it's a lot different than the born books. We don't need to go and to spend 20 minutes on how it's different.

But it's the screenplay is very different. Have you read any Ludlum books? I never did. But my dad was like, Ludlum could have released a book of him taking a shit for 350 pages. And my dad would be like, I just read it, read it first day, read cover. Hall of Fame dad dad fiction. All time.

What's the other one that went on Amazon that Titus Gautis Gilles Oh, Bosch. Yeah. Bosch. That's my dad's favorite. That's like the all time.

Michael Connolly, yeah. So anyway, the pedigree of those two things plus knowing about the books, I think all of us were excited. Yeah. The cast was really good. And it was a mix of,

what's her name? Franca Patente? How do you say it? Franca Yeah. Franca Patente, who we knew from a low-lo-lun, one run-low run, you know, wasn't a famous, famous star, but was, I think we all liked her. And then just a slew of those guys, Brian Cox, Chris Cooper, Clive Owen, our guy, Josh Hamilton, we'll get to him later. Some early Walton Gagons.

We didn't even know that was going to be a thing. Some early Goggins. And then Gabriel Mann, who I bought stock in after outside Providence. And then the random Julia Stiles being in this movie, which we'll talk about later, which was a very, almost like stunt casting. Yeah, but is her kind of role throughout this franchise is very strange. It's like, very strange. It's this ghost plot line where you are like, at some point there was a story meeting where they were like, so and then, but we find out born is with Nicolette, you know, or like falls in love of Nicolette. And she plays a really significant part, and they do have a relationship.

But she's like third build in this movie, isn't she? Because I think she was legit famous at the time. Like she was in that Save the Last Dance and a couple, you know, she was basically dead even with Sarah Michelle Geller and Neve Campbell and, you know, a couple of people from that era. So the other one, Chris Cooper was kind of having a moment here in the early 2000s. And it was weird because he was that guy forever. and then what was it? 1999 was American Beauty. Then he was in the Patriot,

born identity, adaptation, he's C-Biscuit, and he just kind of became way more than that. He became Chris Cooper. Yeah. But for the entire 90s

was that guy. Yeah, I mean, I think that he first kind of jumped up on my radar in Lone Star, the Matthew McConaughey, John Sales movie,

and he's worked with John Sales a bunch. I think he's in Maitwan, which was one of those first roles. he's an incredible character actor I mean you know whenever and the way he plays Conklin I kept trying to think of like do I want to put him in the um overacting award do I want to give you all you got give me all you got award him and he he's animated but you he really like tells you a lot about Conklin without ever telling you you know what I mean about this guy who's like in his shirt sleeves is probably like lives in suburban Virginia and has two kids but like

at his work is like I run a black ops assassin like kill squad. It's weirdly a character that pops up an action movies over and over again. Like John Voigt was like this, an enemy of the state where it's like he's this evil dude, but then we see him home with his wife and his young kid and she's giving him shit because of the groceries. You're like, wait a second. I thought this guy was evil.

Watching Washington on Sunday and just be like, oh, Mark Rippin, God damn it. Right. One more thing on Chris Cooper. Favorite Chris Cooper performance ever, because I have one. Mine's Lindstar, actually. Okay. Yeah.

I love, I really like a time to kill. And I'm going to force you to do it at some point on the rewatchable. I will do it. And I've gotten a lot of mileage out of O'Connie in that movie. I would love to do it. There's an underrated Chris Cooper scene because he gets shot, right? Yeah. When Sam Jackson goes to avenge the rape of his daughter and he ends up shooting a cop

and the cop loses his leg. And then the cop testifies and he does the thing, I would have done the same thing he did. He has that whole speech and the crowd starts going nuts. It's just really good. I really enjoy Chris Cooper. I like that movie. Wait,

I'm surprised that we both didn't just agree to give it his best performance to his role in the town. His cameo, his town cameo, basically. Oh, his Affleck's dad? Yeah. That was a one scene. That was like, hey, Chris, show up from about 9, the three and you're done, here's your check. Apparently in this movie, Chris Cooper and Brian

Cox, they only had them for five days. So they had to cram in basically everything in those five days, which I thought was interesting. So Lyman had been a fan of the Ludlam novel since high school, secured the rights to the book from Warner Brothers, did a year with Tony Gilroy, the famous Tony Gilroy, two years of production, Universal Pictures acquires the film rights. There was allegedly a rewrite and then a really, really famously troubled shoot, which there's a lot of good stuff on the internet about where studio is slowing the film's development down. There was a riff between Lyman and Universal. The executives were just pissed about the pacing. They thought the action sequences were going to be bigger. The Lyman's super suspicious of the studio being

involved at all. He's redoing things because he decides he doesn't like the thing and going back. they're just losing their minds. Reshoots, rewrites. The movie's supposed to come out September 2001, which was a bullet dodge, because every movie that came out that month, 9-11 happens and those movies I got lost. Gets pushed to June 2002.

It goes $8 million over budget. And Tony Gilroy is faxing elements of rewritten scenes to the production during the thing as Lyman's just changed his mind over and over again. And everyone's going nuts. the rift was so deep between Universal and Lyman

that they cut off all communication and Damon somehow became the conduit and he told Vulture in 2008 I would be Lyman surrogate because at least I could be heard so then there are all these rumors after that that Lima got fired

and that the production was done because Frank Marshall was a producer on this and that Frank Marshall and the editors finished it. And apparently in the Born Identity DVD extras features, Lyman's nowhere to be seen. Do you think he got fired? No, but I don't know if that's, there's two more scenes after the Clive Owen characters killed in the field. And to me, that's kind of where like the Doug Lyman movie ends.

And then they're like, like, once Marie leaves, you're just sort of like, oh, there's another 25 minutes of this movie. And I feel like that's them tying up loose ends a little bit. And that part, especially the very end, although I do think I know that they, that Lyman shot the Marie at the scooter shop in Greece where he shows up, that just feels like another movie in some ways. Like the whole Conklin in Paris stuff feels a little bit different. Yeah, there were multiple endings.

I think there was one big giant ending that had lots of things blowing up. And I think both Damon and Lyman were against it. Damon told GQ the word I'm born was that it was supposed to be a turkey It's very rare that a movie comes out a year late Has four rounds of reshoots and it's good And that was the buzz And that was still when

Nerds like us were reading Entertainment Weekly or whatever And you could actually It wasn't pre-internet But the internet wasn't in shape For some of the movie gossip stuff yet And you know EW has two paragraphs about born identity

in trouble, delays, and you're just like, uh-oh. Right. That sounds bad. 60 million budget made 214 million. And births a franchise. Births a major franchise. There's been as many, I think Mission Impossible's had one more. Yeah, there's the three, there's Ford Borns with Damon, a Jeremy, the Jeremy Renner movie,

which is excellent, which we can talk about if you want, and then a television show that was on USA for a year, Treadstone. It was hard for me to watch Renner as born. because I kept waiting for him to go, you think you're better than me? I just kept waiting for him to be Jim. I think if they had had Bourne's cousin who was from Massachusetts,

like Murf Born. And he was just Massole Board. John Michael Kane definitely sounds like a guy gets killed in the first act of the town. Oh, no question. You see Johnny Mike, he got killed outside that bank. The floor has got him.

Roger Ebert, three stars. Praise Damon's, ability to be, quote, focused and sincere, concludes that the film was, quote, unnecessary, but not unskilled. I thought that would be a good title for an autobiography of somebody, unnecessary, but not unskilled. It's like the ultimate backhanded compliment. He seems like he was in a mood at that one.

Like, it's like, if you got this movie, if you were like, if you were just going to the movies in 2002 and you got this, you were just like, oh, my God, this is like my favorite movie. I'm going to go see this five times this year. Oh, yeah. Well, the other cool thing about it. comes up in the research that they didn't know if there's going to be a sequel.

And Lyman and Damon, they really wanted to kill Boren Off at the end and basically talked themselves out of it because I think at the last second they realized well, that would be dumb. What if this movie's a giant hit? We can make two more of these. Because at that point, Cruz had

laid the groundwork a little bit for Mission Impossible. And essentially the fact that they made more movies and that they were successful and Damon works with greengrass throughout the 2000s doing it, it essentially sets up what Matt Damon wants to do with the rest of his career

because he's able to go off and make smaller movies or try different stuff because he can always go back to Bourne and know that it's going to be a huge, huge success. I just feel like if this movie comes along 10 years later,

they're making it, first of all, they would sign Damon up to a four-year, four-film contract. The first film would be setting up the second film.

Yeah. And I think one of the reasons I like this movie so much is they're not worried about the second film. It's like, what's our premise? He's probably one of the most terrifying assassins in the world. He got amnesia. He's trying to figure out what happened to the last three weeks of his life. And that's it. They don't care about three years later.

And that's, to their credit, the one thing that's really defined this series throughout is if you, and we don't, I don't want to spoil born supremacy. in case we ever do it as a rewatchables. But they have guts in this series. They will take people out of the series that people have a huge attachment to. Right. Well, it did a lot of good stuff for Damon

because it gave him a franchise. It led to a bunch of other, another A plus list roles like the stuff in The Departed and things like that. And from that point on, it cemented him because we've seen it go, you know, there's a version of this where he has that run from 97 to 99.

He's in Ocean's 11, but never can really get it going. I think you needed a franchise like this. It could have been an Affleck situation where you're hitting rock bottom for four years, basically, and then having to come back from it. I think the Affleck piece is interesting to me, too. He never found a franchise like this. And I guess his franchise, basically, his way to stand out was directing. and he realized, you know, late 2000s, like, well, my franchise days have come and gone.

I'm going to direct. But then interestingly enough, a decade later, it's like, oh, maybe I should do the franchise thing and went after Batman. But Damon, I think, saw the chessboard just better. Yeah, I mean, this is just speculation, but, like, while Damon is doing, like, movies like this, I think Affleck continues to work with Michael Bay. Not in a bad way, but, like, I mean, I love it Armageddon, but does Pearl Harbor. And it's kind of just, like,

rocketing towards this, it's either you're either the biggest star in the world or bust kind of thing. Yeah. And Damon is just taking more control. And even in a movie like Born is like got his fingerprints all over it. And is very much like when they tried to take Tony Gilroy's script and throw it in

the trash, Damon stopped that from happening. Like he's really throwing his weight around here. So it's not that surprising kind of knowing where he comes from with Goodwill Hunting and where he goes with the rest of his career. He's just very hands-on. Believable as well. as an action guy.

Yeah. Which I think, you know, they can cheat this stuff however they want. He's somebody that I really feel like when those two guys come at him in the park, he's going to get out of it. Yeah. And also, like, you see speed like that in The Matrix, but it feels very gamed out. Like, it feels like there's a lot of special effects to it. Right. It just really felt like these guys were fighting throughout this movie.

I agree. All right, we're going to take a break and do the categories. This podcast is brought to you by Carvana. Selling your car should feel like one less thing on your list. Not one more. With Carvana, it is. Just go to Carvana.com and to your license plate or VIN and get a real offer down to the penny.

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I wrote a little song to remind you, Choice Hotels gets you more of the experiences you value. The Can Beah Hotels got it all. A rooftop bar, have a ball. Bring a date, your squad, or even your mom. Book direct at Choiceotails.com. All right, before we do the categories quickly, I wrote a whole piece for Grantland, RIP,

2014, the Action Movie Championship Belt. And, you know, And we've talked about some of these movies. The 80s and 90s were the glory days. And then Nick Cage and probably won the belt there in the mid-late 90s. And then it got a little bit weird. You saw Vin Diesel, Fast and Furious and Knock Around Guys, and then Triple X, which people didn't really like.

But he kind of had the belt, but it was like when there's a bad heavyweight champ. And then we enter this weird point from 2002 to like basically until Leonise and taken, where it's like, Damon is born, Uma Thurman in the two Kill Bill movies. The Rock trying to grab this title, but not really being able to do it because he's in rundown and those type of things, but it doesn't really happen for him.

Denzel does Man on Fire, and I think he actually took the title. I gave it to him in the 2004 range. And then we just kind of move into this weird Jason Stathamara, which is like basically poor man's born in all these different things. Jackie Chan. And then finally,

Leon Nissen and Taken, and then that starts paving the way for the Fast and Furious movies with Vin Diesel and action comes back. Born identity is a weirdly, born identity in the two kill bill movies are kind of weirdly important to the early part of that decade,

because I do feel like action movies were dying. They didn't really, they'd kind of done every model of the one guy on the poster, but not, they hadn't taken it up a notch. Yeah. Yeah. Or even like,

the con air model or the they had just done every variation of it but they hadn't figured out like actually you should make the movies better and I think that's why I think this is such an important movie. Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. I think also there was like this really cool thing that started happening in the 90s where there was

this dialogue between American action movies and foreign action movies and whether it was like John Louie action movies or Luke Bisson and like that obviously has a huge part in the Taken movies and and like what that French sensibility. And like you were saying earlier, like, just being able to, like, set them in different

places and, and cast different kinds of actors, I think that that's still happening today. So, like, you see a movie like The Raid, and then the Raid shows up in John Wick, and then John Wick shows up in another movie. Right. Do you have, like, any idea who might have it right now? Do you have any feel for it? The Action Championship Belt? Right. So Keanu had it for a while there, second half of the 2010s. But I think, you know, it's been... a year since WIC 3. I think the person who has it right now

is John David Washington. Oh, interesting. So I don't know if you've watched Tenet yet. It just came out on, it came out like this past week. Doing it this weekend. Dude, you're not going to think it makes any sense, but it's got like three or four

of the best action scenes like of the last like 15 years or so. Wow. And he is, you can just tell he's an ex-athlet. He's just like, he runs. He jumps. He can slide across a floor. It's fucking awesome. Awesome. You know, I had him on my podcast when the Spike movie was coming out.

Yeah. And we talked about this because I was like the ex-athlet thing. And I was saying like, just do, be Wesley Snipes for five years. Go look at Wesley Snipes. IMDB and all that different, like it's kind of like sports and action where the two ways he became such a big star. And we were laughing about that. And now you're saying he actually might be the action movie championship. I mean, I don't know if they'll make another tenet, like a sequel to that. I doubt it. But like, I hope that somebody else really good makes a cool action movie with him.

Because otherwise, it's still cruise jumping off of buildings, you know? The thing that's sitting there is that what is the 2021 Passenger 57? Right. Where it's just like basically the same kind of diehard type movie, but we have a black cast and we're just taking it up a notch. Passenger 57 is really good. I watched it like two months ago. I really enjoyed it.

It might be my favorite Wesley Snipes movie. And it's weird that they don't try to make those more often, just in general. Yeah, I think those movies... Here's our one star. Just for some reason, like the margins on those movies have gotten so expensive that it has to be like a comic book movie for them to do it. Category. First one. Most rewatchable scene.

We'll start, unless you're attached to Born on the Boat with Bulletholes in his back. No, but can I just say really quickly about born on the boat with bullet holes in his back? Yeah. I've been thinking about this a lot because I was talking about this with the guys who made industry, the HBO show. And they were like really, really insistent that like you just, we just not insult the audience's intelligence and that if you throw people in, they'll figure out what's going on more than if you just explain and explain and explain. And it's fucking awesome when he's just like pulled out of the water and on this weird fishing boat and these guys are all smoking and, uh, You know, you're just like really tossed into it. Like, I don't think anybody speaks English, really,

until they start operating on him. Yeah. And then they just pulled two bullets out of his back. Yeah, and a bank account out of his hip. Jesus. First, we watch a both scene. Born opening the security box. This scene works every time.

If you and I ever wrote an action movie, I promise there's going to be a security box scene. I was thinking, if you got amnesia and you were opening, own security box. You mutter yourself. My name is Chris Ryan. I host a watch.

I love Philly teams. What is Grantland Quarterly number four? Who is Brian Calangelo? I don't know what your John Michael King name would be. Can you imagine if Calangelo would be my Conklin? I've got to find him. No, no, it's there. He's been hunting me across the globe for revenge.

Yeah. It was Darry all. long. He was the one that fed us the Colangelo's stuff. I actually think Damon could have been more confused, surprised, and kind of overwhelmed by all of the different passports with his face on it. I just feel like I would need to take a seat for like five seconds. That's where like the weird, the cool thing about the early part of this movie is like the little parts where his training kicks in. And he says that to Marie when they stop at the diner later. And he's like, I'm checking sight lines. I have all the exits. I know the license plates of all the trucks. I know you can find a gun

and the gray truck over there. I mean, that stuff is so cool. 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 215 pounds and knows how to handle himself. I know the best place to look for a gun is the cab of 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? Yeah, I had that. Hold that thought. Next one, Boren escapes with the red bag. it's basically right after the security box scene, but I feel like you have to separate those two scenes.

Just the way he goes up the stairs with the purpose. And Doug Lyman was saying how in the preparation of the movie, he wanted, he wanted Damon to move like a boxer, which I thought was an interesting way to think about it, where like a boxer walking to the ring where they're just purpose, focus, looking, going straight ahead.

He goes up the stairs, he's looking around. He never looks like too suspicious. he's immediately figuring out oh, I'll just, oh, knocking that there. Oh, that thing is a lock on and I'll get it open. And then it's up on the wall. And Damon really did that. He didn't have a stunt double.

And he climbed down that wall, which I think is insane. I can't believe they even thought that was a good idea. Yeah, that's where this movie's different than most action movies. It's because in every other action movie, there's either a dumpster down there that the guy can jump into

or he does something supernatural, like he jumps all the way across the alley to another building. But in this, it's like, how would you actually get down? You know, and you would just do this, like, climbing, like, like, yeah. And it's, that's, that's the genius of the movies, the practicality of it. I think Cruz was furious when he saw the wall thing.

He's like, he called Paula Wagner. He's like, all right. We are the gold standard. We're the gold standard. Who is Matt Damon? I need to, what was the movie where he was on the mountain? That was way later. But it clearly was, clearly was, clearly Damon was in his.

head. Yeah, right. When he's like climbing the mountain with no... That's Mission Impossible too, isn't it? That was... Wasn't that after this, though? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Damon was in Cruz's head. That scene's great. Next one. You mentioned the diner scene. There's a couple things I like about that scene. And I know it's not the most rewatchable scene in the movie, but I like that they get into it, but they don't try to do the stupid...

So where are you from? Yeah. My dad was a huge Cleveland Indians fan growing up. And I remember in his last breath, he said, I just wanted to see them win before I died. And then I left two years later. Like, it's none of that. He's just like, here are my skills.

Here's what we need to do. But yet weirdly they have a connection. I don't really know how they pull that off. She's always kind of connected to him, but he's not really doing that much other than being somebody who has this clearly frightening past. They set up her character. well. Like even when they start talking about her, when Conklin starts talking about her. But her whole

like little nattering story about like a surf shop and beeritz. But then we found out that the guy who had the lease was a scam artist and her turning up in a bunch of different European cities. And you kind of get the feeling like this is someone who's really cool. But at the enough at the end of their rope that if someone was like, I'll give you 20 grand to drive me to Paris, she might just be like, what the fuck do I have to lose? Well, and the other thing is, as you're watching this, like if it was Claire Daines, you wouldn't think this, right? With her, there's like the 12% chance she might be in on it all along.

Sure. And she's like a double agent because there's something slightly mysterious about her that doesn't pay off because it doesn't have to. But I like that little edge to her. I think it's because she's German. I think all the German. There's 12% with all the Germans. Bourne's apartment.

Oh my God. All of that's great. I forgot what a jump scare it is when machine gun guy grows to the window. My wife screamed when it happened. We both totally forgot. Yeah. It's kind of on the level with Exorcist 3, with the guy walking through the hall and and her reaction is so good where she's like, why would someone do that?

Why would someone jump out the window? Like, she's in, her shock is really palpable. Right. And they said it was written differently. Oh, really? And they played it with the shock. But in the script, she was supposed to be like, like doing that whole thing.

And they played it the shockway, which I thought was awesome. That jump scare, I was holding our new gold retriever puppy. And the name is puppy? No, his name's Murph. I was holding him. He was on my lap, sleeping. And the jump scare happened.

And I literally jerked. and I almost threw him forward. Because I just, I just forgotten that that was going to happen. Machine gun guy, his name is Castel. And I think his, one of the reasons I love this scene is he's basically just doing a Terminator 2 impersonation. Yeah, he's Robert Patrick. He just has that crazy look and he just keeps coming forward. It's almost like a cartoon.

I don't think I'd ever seen the getting up like that thing, where you just like basically like, it's like one of those like rubber, rubber guys that are outside. the gas stations or car dealerships and just gets right back up. And then at one point, Boren breaks his ankle or his knee. Still doesn't stop the guy from getting... I think he breaks like every bone in that guy's body. This guy's still able to go flying through a window and jumping out himself. That seems awesome.

The car chase, a staple if we're in a foreign country. Gee, you got to give me the car chase. The person has to have a shitty car. There's got to be a lot of streets and quick turns. And the person just randomly carrying the jump. giant thing of glass that somebody's going to drive. And it hits all the beats. And then there's the motorcycle cop whose job only is to fly over a car.

Fly through the air and take the flip. Yeah. It's about an outbreak his neck. I can't watch those scenes that I'm always thinking about Blues Brothers for some reason where I'm just like they just assembled as much stuff as possible for people to crash into. Is Blues Brothers are rewatchables? It's, you know what?

It's super complicated. Like that movie is like three and a half hours long. That is like the slowest movie of all time. But I would definitely do it with you. just to re-investigate it. I watched the Belushi doc three times because I love Belushi.

And then Blues Brothers made me want to watch Blues Brothers again. Blue Brothers just has like 10 minute musical sequences and like really long car chases. I was shocked how awesome the Aretha Franklin scene was. That is like one of the best five-minute scenes

of the early 80s. It's just amazing. And then all the, you know, James Brown's in it. Ray Charles, it's this amazing snapshot of this specific era in black culture

combined with this John Belushi Dan Akroyd movie in Chicago. It falls apart that I think we should do it. I'm sure people will get mad. I don't care.

Next one. I just wrote this down as Damon kills Clive Owen. Paris. I live in Paris. Do you get the headaches? Yeah. I get such by headaches.

You know at night when you're driving a car. I don't know It was something to do with the headlines. What is Treadstone? Treadstone said pills. They said, go to Paris. Is Treadstone in Paris?

Look at this. Look at whatever you give. I'm going to, a spoiler alert, this is my favorite scene. And there's the way they film it, and in the research, it said, Lyman wanted to make this feel a little more intense, and he has the camera waist high, which I didn't it never kind of clicked with me until I watched it this time

like that's kind of why you feel like you're in the field with them and just in general all of it and his his wherewithal for like something doesn't feel right you guys go in the basement and then how he goes out

and then how they do it when he's like the dog he's like the bloody dog has gone missing he's like does that happen often and they were like he was like he never misses breakfast and that's when he knows

such a good moment he's not anywhere all right let me get dressed. Who? Bloody Dothko missing. Does that happen a lot? Well, that mutt.

Mrs. Breakfast, not a chance. There's always something, right? Get in the basement. What? Get everyone in the basement right now. Olivia is my dog that if everyone's getting fed and Olivia wasn't around and it would be like,

uh-oh, get in the basement kids. So many of the cool action scenes in this movie have an emotional beat before them like that. Like, even the car chase, when he's like, does this car have, like, does this car handle okay? Because the tires feel a little splashy. Yeah. He's like, put your seatbelt on. It's so good.

I love this scene. Yeah. I think it is a really uniquely great action movie scene. It reminds me, John Wick tried to do their version of it in the second one with Common. After he kills the Italian lady and he's leaving the club. and common does the What's up John? Yeah.

You work in a night? And John looks like, yeah. And then they have that whole eight-minute scene. It's just like, wow, I've never seen this before in my life. But there's a crucial difference with this scene, which is that Damon just, there's no competition. He just kills this guy. Right. And that you're waiting for that final boss fight.

You think that this is going to be like a 10-minute long. Like, first they're going to start with guns and then they're going to have like a fist fight in this field. And then something crazy is going to happen. and he just basically like rope-a-dopes them and takes him out with like a farmhouse shotgun. And it's so cool because that's like the one line you really get about who they are is from Clive Owen. He's like, oh, look what they make you give.

Clive Owen, who's in the movie for like three minutes. I have a four-bill back there. I need to talk to you about Clive-Oen a little bit. All right, we'll get there. Yeah, he completely outshines Clive Owen. It's reminiscent of like, oh, what a duel this is going to be between this cornerback and this receiver and then the cornerback just completely

shuts down the receiver. And you're like, oh my God, that wasn't close. This guy can't even get open. Yeah. He just completely demolished them. And then you could argue the movie could have ended there. Born confronting Chris Cooper. I don't want to do this anymore.

I don't think that's a decision you can make. Jason Bourne. is dead. You hear me? He drowned two weeks ago. You're going to go tell him that Jason Bourne is dead. You understand? Where are you going to go? I swear to God, if I even feel somebody behind me, there is no measure to how fast and how hard I will bring this fight to your doorstep. I'm on my own side now. I'm on my own side now. All of that stuff leading to probably the second best moment in this movie when he jumps off. What is he on the fifth floor?

Yeah. He's like, no, I'm going to make it because I have this dead guy I'm going to land on, so it's going to be fine. As he's going down, head kill shot, and then lands, he's like, oh, thank God that 200-pound guy was underneath me. That scene's amazing.

Yeah. Yeah. So what do you got for most rewatchable? I'm going to go to the farmhouse sequence. I just always, I always thought it was so interesting and offbeat and perfect. It was the perfect end for him and Marie's relationship.

I love all this stuff with like this guy, Aman who's just like, kind of up for it, but also just sort of like, what the fuck's going on? Yeah, but he's like,

I guess I won't turn you away and then just like the, him putting together like, oh, there's shotgun shells so there must be a gun somewhere and then figuring out like how to distract Clive Owen and then go around him.

That's so good. Yeah, I was trying to think how close she was to Aymon and, who that would have been in my life that I could be like, hey, I'm just using your farmhouse. Yeah, right.

I guess she's really hoping that he's not going to be there, but yeah. Right. That scenes really, really, really special. And I think when we talk about most rewatchable scenes, now in the streaming era, it's a little bit harder of a concept to grasp because I'm not sure people watch TV

the way we used to watch TV with the flipping channels. But that's like, if I'm flipping channels and they're in the farmhouse but nothing's happening yet and it's like, oh, here's Eman. And it's like, I'm like, oh man,

we're like five minutes away from the field. Like, I'm staying. Yes. Yeah. So it's like the ultimate example of that. All right, what's age the best? I just copied this from Wikipedia. The skipper finds a laser projector

under the man's hip that gives the number of a safe deposit box in Zurich. Just sign me up. When is that ever an hour? worked. I mean, what's age of the best is getting picked up out of the ocean by a Marseille fishing boat that happens to have a guy who seems to be a pretty decent trauma surgeon. That's like, you know, what if he had gotten to a boat that didn't have a good trauma surgeon? He just had like all those bullets and bank accounts inside of them and yeah.

I had that in nitpicks. It was a pretty lucky boat to land on. He didn't lay down like Quintz Boat and Jaws. He's probably not getting those bullets. Born goes in the water. Man goes in the water. I have a story for you. I know you have amnesia. Shock, go in the water. Amnesia?

Just always works. I'm still waiting for the first amnesia mover. It's like, ah, they didn't really use the amnesia well enough. The soundtrack is, I both like it, and I feel like it's very 1996 to 2002-ish, right down to at the end of the movie, Moebe comes on. Then they dropped the Moby song. Yeah. I mean, we were just in the era of Go. And, you know, that was just how things went back then.

Crucial, crucial Moby appearance. Mentioned any action movie shot in a European country. What's the age your best? Moby. I also have Mekanos. Mekinos, great, great final destination. Anytime they drop Mekinos in a movie, it always leaves you like, why don't I live there? What am I doing here?

What's happened in my life? And then I mentioned how Lyman said how this is his quote Matt Dam and I talked about killing Jason Born at the end of Born Identity we were like no one will see that coming and obviously we decided not to do that

that is a what's age the best decision because that got us about four sequels anything else for you? Yeah I think we have to talk about the romance in the center of the movie you know like the relationship between Born and Marie so I think that like those kinds of

depictions of falling in love or those relationships are really like they're as good as the details that they have. And that was what was so great about before sunrise. When we saw her like kicking and screaming and a lot of those indie movies just had very, very, very specific details. So here's something really weird that happened. In late 90s, I was, I did a study abroad in Ireland. And then like on the spring break from Ireland, I went like on a train trip around Europe with my girlfriend at the time. And back then, like you would basically sort of try to plan out your trips, but essentially when you would get to a town, you would call a hostel

or go to the hostel and try and book a room for the night. And when we went to Venice, we screwed up and we wound up booking a room that was like not in Venice. It was like, it was like as if like basically it would be like going to Foxborough or something like that for Venice.

So we were all, like it took forever to get there. He'd stick a boat and a bus. And then when you got there, it was like a school dorm in the middle of nowhere. And we had been on the road for a while. And that night, in this weird room in Venice, I dyed her hair. And it was like this really weird, like, memory. I will never forget of being in Italy and doing that.

And then a couple years later, it just happens in this movie. Wow. It's just one of those things where if you ever see something like that, you immediately are like, this is so specific and so lived in that, like, it makes the entire relationship between Marie and Jason. It's a great point. it really feels authentic they feel like they're falling in love

like in this movie it kind of feels like they had something going there yeah she she has a way of there's like five six times where the way she's looking at him really works where she's not trying too hard with it

but you can clearly see she has affection for him and they do a couple of times basically like there's there's a moment where he's like you have to run now and she's like no

because like you can tell she's like I need to help you then there's the great scene before the, I can't remember it's before, after the car chase, but where he thinks she's gone and she's gone to go get a bottle of liquor. And he's like, I thought I told you not to leave the car, you know? Yeah. And then towards the end, when they're blown at the hot hotel, and she tries to run away from him. And he was like, I will, I will take you wherever you want to go, but it has to be together. Yeah. All good stuff. With stage the worst. I don't really have a lot for this category

other than, I think, Bourne's thick brown sweater that he wears for the first half hour of this movie is just fucking, nobody in their right mind would wear that in 2020. Just kind of a red flag if I'm in a Swiss bank and a guy walks in with bullet holes

in his big brown sweater. I'm probably going to ask for a secondary piece of identification. Yeah, true. The other, what's changed the word, it's just him being able to get out of that hole when he's getting chased by the cops, he gets to the American embassy and just how

it's like yeah cops can't come in and then it takes like about two minutes before everybody's like hey what about this guy the bullet hole is in his sweater like maybe we should be a little more concerned but in general I think you can make a case

maybe the ending for what's age of the worst just because it's so tidy but I got to say I really like the ending yeah I mean it's sweet I like being in Greece I like that she's got the red bag it's a call back to the security thing in the beginning. Yeah, small business owner. Yeah. Yeah.

Casting what ifs. Oh, wait, I'll just say for what age the worst. Yeah. This movie comes out post 9-11. It's like on the tail end of, you know, enemy of the state and a couple of other, like, surveillance espionage movies. I think that the stuff in, like, when they're in the crisis suite, you know, and a crisis suite is like basically like they call it.

that in the Bourne legacy, but it's basically whenever they get up a bunch of people on computers to watch surveillance footage of people. Yeah. I think that they are like right on the edge of the technology being like too outmoded, like where it's like, you're telling me this footage is 48 minutes old. And now we would have like a live stream on Twitch of him. But they're like, I got to find the alley shot and see if I can get something in a reflection to see where board is. We're going to take a break and then we're going to do the rest of the categories. It's a special break though. We're bringing Craig on, our producer. Craig. All right. Didn't know this. Tell us about Gamblers, the podcast you are producing for The Ringer. Yeah, the finale just came out on Joey

Fortuna. It's a six-part series talking about kind of the underground lives of six different gamblers who kind of made their whole lives doing what everybody thinks you can't do. And it's really interesting. Hosted by Dave Hill. A lot of people really like this podcast. Random people in my life just like, hey, man, I heard episode five. That was fucking awesome. So check out Gamblers. Every single one is like an Aaron Sorkin movie. People are worried about Craig because he helped produce the Country Strong podcast last week.

So they were worried about him career-wise. But I felt like Gamblers evened it out. That's my bounce back. Okay. I stand by Country Strong. All right. So listen to Gamblers on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. All right.

Casting What Ifs. How about this? 1983. Do you know this? No. Universal plan to make this. Can you guess who the star was? Was it sly?

No, great guess. I'll give you two more guesses. 1983. Chuck Norris? No, solid guess. 83? Eastwood? You're going to be mad.

Who? It's easy. Bert Reynolds. Oh, yeah. Who was thrown in every movie from 1976 to 1983. To that end, Reynolds had two big.

of his schedule, so the movie stalled and ended up stalling basically for the rest of the century. So then Lyman wanted Brad Pitt. Yep. Goes after him. Brad Pitt turns it down to star in Spy Game. A rewatchable. We might have to do just an entire rewatchables podcast about Brad Pitt and all the roles he either turned down, didn't get all the forks of the road for that dude. Because it's at least 10 movies we've done on this that he almost did.

I almost wish we could do a double feature rewatchable. that's just spy game and the recruit. Like pretty good spy movies, but not, like, great. But like the recruit and spy game were both very rewatchable. Well, we did on the rewatchable's 99 feed, we did that pod where we just basically covered eight movies that weren't good enough for a podcast. Like eight minutes on each.

Maybe we should do that with like eight sort of rewatchable spy movies. That's not a bad idea. I think that's a big miss for Brad Pitt. To not do Bourne? Yeah, because it would have been the sequel, the franchise, I always kind of wanted him to have. Also, it takes him away from Mr. and Mrs. Smith. He never meets Angelina Jolie and doesn't end up with six kids and a seven-year lawsuit and having to come back 17 times.

If he just does the Borden movie, his life's so much more simple. Him and Jen Anderson are still happy. It worked out well for everybody. Brad Pitt's got Oscars. He's doing good. I don't know if it worked out for the Jolie Pitt relationship. No, that's true. He also approached Russell Crow.

That's an interesting one. I think Russell Crow at that point in his career would have done a really good job at the point. But that's after Gladiator. There's something about Damon that feels like every manish. After Gladiator, Russell Crow feels like he's just like this superhero, even though he tries to basically play that down for most of the rest of his career. I'm glad he didn't do it because then it makes proof of,

of life more special. Yeah, it does, right. Are we doing proof of life? Just doing it again? We'll do that for the 250th. The reproof. The reproof of life. Arnold Schwarzenegger also approached.

I just don't get that one. He would have been too old. Tom Cruise, they had to go to. Tom Cruise was like, I'm already Ethan Hunt. No thanks. Yeah. And then Slice Stallone, which I don't believe,

I think he was too old at that point. But apparently in the books, born is older. So that's why they were kind of gravitating toward older actors. then they get Damon. Here's the other one that's interesting. Lyman wanted Sarah Polly to be the female lead. Huge. Huge.

She was in Go and is pretty legendary in Hollywood circles for could have been a much bigger star, but literally did not want it, did not want to become famous, did not want to have a career that led her on an A-list path, wanted to do quirky indie stuff, wanted to direct. And I think there's like three or four stories about her like this, right, where she just turned out an awesome part. Yeah, I'm trying to find, I can't remember what, it's weird, because she's in Dawn of the Dead after, you know, she goes in Go. A couple years later, she's in Dawn of the Dead, like a, which is a pretty good Zach Snyder movie. I can't remember what the other movies are that she turned down, but this was a huge one.

It's a couple of them. This is a big one. I also really liked her. Oh, yeah. And it was one of those things that was like, why isn't there, why isn't Sarah Polly and more stuff? Best that guy, aka the Joey Pants Award. I narrowed it down to two. this movie's full of that guys.

Although the third assassin is of that guy, too. I don't even know what that guy's name is. Pick, Pico, I don't know who the actor is, yeah. I think he shows up in the second one, too, right? Yes. Gabriel Mann, who is in Outside Providence, who has been in a bunch of stuff. He was in Summer Catch.

She had a nice run from 98 to, like, 05 here. Never became like a leading guy, but it was kind of the Randall Battenkopf of this era. How about that? Yeah, that's a great pull. Thank you. Thank you. But the clear winner is Atabisi.

What do you think of the Wambosie plotline in this movie? Well, I have him for the next category. The Vincent Hanna, give me all you got a word, Adabisi. He's into goes two for two here. He is dialed up. He's basically playing the guy from Oz after 19 cups of coffee. And every time he's in the movie, it kind of doesn't work. Sir, please.

They want to want to kill me, and we will give them work. If they want to kill me, they better kill me the first time. They better kill me dead. You better kill me when I'm in my sleep. Nguana, listen to me. We need these people. It's hard enough getting people that we know to help us. We need to be careful.

We. No, you. You need to bring me back that bastard, Kaine's head, put it out in front of this house, and show them what kind of what we are fighting. I think it's the worst part of the movie. We should have had it in what stage the worst. There needs to be some reason why Born is in the middle of the ocean in the first place.

But it is like a plot line that you can, could almost fully excise from the movie and still have the same movie. Yeah, or you could just, he did this and it's one scene. I don't know why we have these additional scenes of like Adabisi going to the morgue. And it's like, that was not the assassin. And him, I just don't think you need it. But I felt like- I guess you do need something where it's like,

what did Bourne see on that boat that made him not go through with his mission? And it's like those kids. What a run for Adabesi. Yeah. So he does ask, he starts trickling to movies like they. everything Crests with Lost, and then he's so kind of hard to do with on Lost that they write him out of the show,

even though he was supposed to be on for five years. He's gone in like 15 episodes, and I think, I don't know if it's really worked out that great for him since. Sometimes you can just be a little too wacky. Yeah. The Deion Waiters Award, who do you think I'd pick for this one?

I have Clive. Do you think he's in too much of it? He only says one sentence. So I consider Clive, and he was my runner a pick. I have Castel the machine gun agent. He's in for like two minutes. He does the incredible Terminator 2 impersonation.

He's coming in hot the whole time. It's like the energy guy coming in the hoop game who commits two flagrant fouls and has 10 rebounds. It is definitely like the guy, the seventh guy, you know, the second guy off the bench, 12 points in 15 minutes, double, and then texts. It's like Mo Wagner comes in, has 10 rebounds and 9 minutes,

but get kicked out for going. over Blake Griffin's back. Yeah, right. So I vote for him, but Clive Owen is also acceptable. Recasting Couch. I'm going to give you a runner-up choice here. A little Damon connection. Cole Houser instead of Clive Owen.

Why not Casey Affleck instead of Clive Owen? Cole Houser, then we do that. It's a good car. It's a good engine. It's a good engine. It'll run. But my winner, I'm just not a huge Julius Diles fan. Okay.

How about Amy Adams? Sure. Yeah. That part is sort of thankless. I'll give you one more. This is for Sean Fantasy. How about Chloe 70? Little Brown Bunny comeback. That's for me too. I mean, I think the one that we're leaving on the table here right in front of us is Pacino as Conklin. You're worried about a budget meeting? If we don't kick care of this, we don't make it to the men's room. Incredible.

Wow. And I like Chris Cooper in that movie, but in this movie, but wow, it's also a really fun Pacino time. It's when he's becoming self-parody. You're telling me that he falls out of a boat with two bullet holes in his back. Yeah, you're right. It would be great.

The only problem is the physical, like him trying to challenge Boren at the end, I think would have been tough for 5 foot 5 Al Pacino. Well, he tackles Henry Rollins in heat. I think he can take on Jason Bourne. True, good point. So would you go Amy Adams or Chloe 70? Chloe 70. I think it's kind of the perfect role for her too, right? And it's her own fault because she became persona non grata in Hollywood for five years after the Brown Buddy thing.

but I just, Julie Stiles, I just can't get over her being in multiple board movies. It just is just too weird. Have fast internet research. We said Damon insisted on performing many of the stunts himself, which you also insist on at the ringer. I do. Yeah. You perform all of your own stunts. Three months of extensive training and stunt work using weapons, boxings, escrima,

some form of martial arts that teaches people to use as little, energy as possible and play off the energy of the other person. That's why he's always just like moving the guy like out of the way but not like that. Yeah. Yeah. He did all the hand-to-hand combat. He climbed the safe house walls at the near the end of the movie. And then obviously did the wall stuff too. Mentioned that the red bag ends up at the end as a hanging planter in Marie's scooter rental shop. How many people died in this movie?

It was less than I thought. Seven? Yeah, eight. Lyman's father was the chief counsel during the Iran-Contra hearings, and allegedly Chris Cooper's character was modeled on all over north because Lyman's father famously interrogated him. Who knows? Were you a big Iran-Contra guy?

No, no, it wasn't at all. I felt like I probably should have been because it was... It feels like it's up your alley. Oh, it was so illegal and reprehensible. It was as bad as anything Trump did from an illegal. standpoint in the office. Movies film mostly in Prague, not Switzerland. I don't know why it's so hard to film in Switzerland.

Seems to be a recurring theme of people pretending there in Switzerland. Switzerland's like, I'm out, we're out, we're not, no, we don't pick sides here. What do you know about Swiss banks? Like, what's truth versus reality, like reality versus fiction there? Like, I, because, like, they're just, like, casually in. Is this a rich guy question? No, it's more like a question of just, like, have we ever actually looked into, like, whether Swiss banks are completely anonymous

and you can just keep all your dirty money there. It's the same thing with when like in the firm, when they go to, they put the stuff in the Cayman Islands. Yeah, there's these weird things where it's just, it's a movie trope of like, oh yeah, the money's there. If you can get your money into the Caymans or like,

or Swiss banks, like you're all good. Yeah. Like, could you just bring anything in a security deposit into a Swiss bank? Right, right. Could it be? Could I put a human head in us? Like,

where is the line trying? What's the minimum deposit you think? Like if I was just like I have five grand, can I open up a checking account? True. Yeah, you probably have to, they probably have to hold like 100 grand or something or you have to wire stuff. One other thing that doesn't necessarily have to do

with this movie, but I just loved, it came across some of the research and I loved it. So Gilroy wrote Born 2, different director, and he wrote the Bourne Supremacy, but he was supposed to, to write the Boren ultimatum, the third in the franchise, struck a deal to write just one draft of the script, take no notes, do no rewrites, and get paid what Damon said was an exorbitant

amount of money. And Damon goes after him in this one interview and says, it's really the studio's fault for putting themselves in that position. I don't blame Tony for taking a boatload of money and handing in what he handed in. It's just that it was unreadable. This is a career ender. I could put this thing up on eBay and it would be game over for that dude. It's terrible. embarrassing. He was having a go basically and he took his money and left. It's pretty harsh for an A-plus Lister to go after a redder like that.

I feel like they have like a kind of strange history, obviously. Like, Gilroy goes on to direct the non-Daman version of this. And that movie and the making of that movie seems to almost prompt Damon and Greengrass to get back in it and do Jason Bourne, which I don't particularly care for.

But yeah, they have like a little bit of a testy relationship. I personally like this movie the most of all the born movies. And it's not really even close for me. I think supremacy is probably better technically made. I go to supremacy identity, then legacy, then ultimatum, I think. Wow. Apex Mountain.

There's a case for Damon here. Okay. I mean, certainly there is, it's when he becomes a global. action star. Yeah. Because you would say the default would be Goodwill hunting, but I think he's done a lot of good stuff since. I think we talked about when we did The Martian, whether that was his Apex Mountain, I got to be honest. I think he's had multiple Apex Mountains. I think he's a multiple Apex guy. But you could tell me that this was his Apex Mountain, I would believe it, because this sets up the next 20 years of his career, gives him a franchise, turns him into one of the three biggest stars in the world again,

all that stuff. So there's a case. Franco Patente, definitely. Amnesia? I mean, the goal with amnesia is that you're, like, what you're forgetting is that you're actually really cool, you know? I don't like, like, amnesia movies where it's just like I was just this regular Joe are not as interesting to be.

But when you forget that you're, like, an assassin, that's the best. Yeah, they haven't made an amnesia movie where somebody finds out that they made the donuts in Somerville for Dunk of Donuts. They're on the four to 12 shift. It would be just my luck to, like, have amnesia and then, like, think that I'm Peyton Pritchard. And that, like... I'm a backup card for the Celtics. Mekinos, no.

There's really no other Apex Mountains other than... I have a question for you. Spy movies, I think we could have the argument. Apex Mountain for small car chases. What are the other nominees? Italian Job. Oh, I like Italian Job. Yeah.

Is that a rewatchable? Yeah. Another, like, I'm not saying it's good, but it's very rewatchable. Maybe we do that when we do our- That would be like an all-time Vincent Hanna Award to Edward Norton in that movie. Yeah, that's one of those performances where you're like, was he on something? Or how many zeros were in the check? Like, what charity were you able to start because of this check?

Right. All right, pick a knits. This is the biggest one for me. How does Bourne just not drown? I guess he's floating. up with his face up. Yeah. I don't think it's very long before they come across him. I don't think he's in the water for that long. But was it, his suit was like, made it so that if he went in the water, he would actually float? Yeah, maybe there was like, it's like a vest of some kind he's wearing. I don't

know. Who floats on their back? He's also been shot in the back. So I don't think he has a lot of choice over how he winds up in the water. And he recovers really nicely. Yes. It's like, hey, man. any any lingering after effects from those two bullets? You're back now. I'm going to fight multiple hitmen for the rest of this movie. He's working the shrimp boat like two seconds later. Yeah, he really could recover. Maybe he had LeBron's trainer.

The car chase, Lyman admits that if you know Paris, it's kind of illogical. Because some of the streets they use don't connect with each other. This is a big thing for me with Boston movie. movies, which I really respected with the town when they did the North End chase, it actually did kind of make sense with how it's used and where they ended up in Charlestown. The worst one was blown away with Jeff Bridges, which I would do a blown away rewatchable just to break down how done the car chase was. They're going downhill for 20 blocks and then end up right at the park and Beacon Hill.

It's so fucking stupid. I don't know how many more movies you want to do on this feed, you know, before we just turn into a beams of pure energy. but I do, I would make the argument that if I get to do my Tommy Lee Jones accent, it should be the last rewatchables. The Tommy Lee Jones blown away accent. But this is the thing. This is what people didn't understand about Country Strong, which a choice I'll defend for the rest of my life. Plus I love Liz Kelly. Doing Country Strong now opens the door for us to do Blown Away. That's right. It's strategy. Yeah. It's Queen's Gambit. And you can do all of Blum.

Yeah, I see the chess word. We can be blown away. You could just have Tommy Lee Jones's accent for the entire podcast. I think he only used. You're not even Chris Ryan. The accent is only used for like eight minutes of the performance, but it is so fucking amazing. Well, he's basically doing Bono. Yeah, or like the Lucky Charms Lepricon.

Yeah. Yeah, he's the Lucky Charms guy. Oh, Jeff Bridges. Oh, I got a bomb for you. And then Bridges is like, does he have a Boston accent? Is it Irish? It goes back and forth. Yeah, it's so weird.

And the Susie Amos performance is just legendary bad. Just a big miss. Yeah, all right, we'll do that one. Another nitpick. I just feel like, I don't care how handsome Matt Damon is in this movie to Marie. Isn't she running the first chance she gets? Like, at some point, what is the danger factor with this complete stranger you met? The cool thing about this is how it makes her complicit so fast.

So once she's on the wanted poster, it starts to get harder and harder to untangle yourself from the situation. So I think it's the kind of combination of she's falling for him and also like she's in trouble too. She is now aiding and abetting an assassin as soon as she drives him. Yeah. All right. Any other nitpicks for you?

Yeah. Well, I've one that's sort of a nitpick hybrid with possibly unanswerable questions. but if they knew then what they knew now, which was that Bourne was going to become this huge franchise, did they fuck up by killing off Clive Owen? Because the Ludlam book, the antagonist, is basically Carlos the Jackal, right? It's this an equally powerful, like super assassin guy.

And Carlos DeJackle is obviously, you know, a real person. But I wonder, because he's essentially replaced by Carl Urban in the next movie. Yeah. Clive Owen, but wouldn't it have been cool if Clive Owen was like kind of the Darth Vader of the Born series and was like in these movies going forward.

So how would you, so basically he would have had to fake that he died at the end. Or he could have just like absconded. Like he could have wounded him and gotten away, you know? That's a pretty key scene though where he confesses. It would have been a good, oh my God, you're still alive. Well, I mean, here's a plot twist.

what if they team up? Like, what if he, like, turns to Clive Owen? He's just like, we don't have to live like this anymore. Like, lets you and me go take this whole thing down. And then the second movie is Clive and Matt. It sounds like you really want to get into Clive Owen right now. Well, I just don't know what's going on with Clive Owen. You know, like, Clive Owen was supposed to be James Bond.

Another movie that I really want to do, I was telling Craig before his Inside Man. And, you know, like, you see Inside Man and you're just like, this guy's going to be a huge movie star, and now he does UPS commercials. I have good news for you. Inside Man is on the 2021 schedule. 15-year anniversary. Yes. Yeah, the Clive Owen thing, it's a little like we talked about Garrett Hedlin last week on the award-winning country strong podcast.

Sometimes it doesn't happen, and it doesn't really make a lot of sense. You know, and I feel like we'll be saying that about Carl Anthony Towns in about 10 years. But sometimes it just, you know, you end up on a couple wrong teams. a couple bad coaches, some bad GMs, and then that's it. You missed your window. Yeah. But I agree with you.

I actually, my favorite Clive Owen is closer, which I think is a really, really interesting movie. And Mike Nichols is so in love with Natalie Portman that entire movie. It's like this love letter to just how hot Natalie Portman is to Mike Nichols.

And Clive Owen's good in that movie. I don't know. I like that movie. He's a great performer. He's a great performer, but he's just like in a lot of shit now and I don't understand what happened. Yeah.

I feel like that's happening that Gerard Butler. Gerard Butler will not be stopped. Gerard Butler has got an action movie coming out this weekend called Greenland. You know they're making den of thieves too. He gave us the thieves. He gave us the den.

He did. Well, he also gave us Chasing Mavericks, which is a top five favorite movie of my wife's. I don't know if you've seen it. I have seen Chasing Maverick. Surf movie. Yeah, it's a skinnier, a lot less drinks before he,

filmed it. Gerard Butler, it's good. It's a good Gerard Butler performance. Next category. Could this be remade as a 10-episode Netflix show? My answer is, fuck yeah. I think I would be excited. They tried to make Treadstone. I think that if they, but I would probably watch, if they shot it in this way, if it was like this, I would watch as much born as you could give me. Is it wrong to do Silence of the Lambs again as a podcast before Clarice comes out on CBS? No. I feel like we could do that again and just have somebody else on it that we do. The lip of that would be, would you want to do Manhunter and, and like put silence into Clarice? Yeah.

I mean, obviously, it's clear, Clarese is going to be silence of the lambs, but I would, I would throw a manhunter in there just because. Yeah, but with Clarice, they said, uh, Lector can't be mentioned. Yeah. On the CBS show. I know. It's got to be all like Buffalo Bill. The rights are so wild on this.

Uh, uh, uh, don't you hurt my dog, lady. Probably answer to real questions. Just, you know, say you don't like to, you don't like to play in this court, but I'm going to make you anyway. Longer hair, Marie or shorter hair, Marie? Longer hair. The shorter hair was really, I thought really strong, though. Quite a strong. That could have gone badly.

Yeah. Yeah. I like the longer hair as well. All right. I was saving this for right here. So Josh Hamilton's in this movie as one of the people that work for Chris Cooper. We love Josh Hamilton.

We did kicking and screaming. He's great in this. I still can't figure out why he wasn't a bigger star. Is it more fun to watch this movie thinking that it's actually Grover from kicking and screaming and working for the CIA? He had gone overseas to see Jane. Finally.

She's dating some guy. He's heartbroken. He's bombing around Europe. And he picks up a disqualse up data entry job in Paris. Just to make ends meet. He needs money. Yeah.

And within two years, Grover is now working for Chris Cooper. For Conklin. And for Conklin. And then his buddy is like, Chris Agamon's calling him like, hey, how's it going there? I haven't heard from you in a while.

I can't talk about it. I'm working on a book. I can't really talk about it. And he's just like really furtive the whole time. But I think they just should have put him in the credits as Grover just to fuck with us. It would be amazing. Yeah.

What piece of memorabilia would you want from this movie? I would probably take Marie's car. Oh, wow. That's a great one. A little red mini. That's a good one. Some splashy tires. So my answer was the red bag.

Turns out, found out on the internet, so it's got to be true. Adam Savage of Mythbusters owns the red bag, which has all the props that Jason pours onto to the desk in the house in Paris. And somehow he bought this on the internet or somebody gave it to him. Wow. Very jealous. Might have to make a trade with Adam Savage.

I have one probably answer, unanswerable question. What is it? Is Matt Damon the greatest actor of all time when it comes to saying the words, fuck it. There's, fuck it, let's go play some cards.

And then in this movie, when he's like trying to decide whether he's going to tell Marie what happened to him, he just goes, Who pays $20,000 for a ride to Paris? Fuck it. I can't remember anything that happened before two weeks ago.

Yeah, he is a great fuck-it guy. I'm trying to think who would have been better than him. I can't think of anybody. I can't think of anybody who's... It's obviously something he likes to say because he's put it in those... You know he put it in those movies. Or at least he says it that way, you know? De Niro?

No, I guess no. You're right. Damon's probably the best fuck-it guy ever. Fuck it. Let's play some cards. fucking with me. Don't fuck with me. Who won the movie, Matt Damon?

Matt Damon. Pretty easy one. Yeah, that's it. I think we hit everything. The Bornite entity. Just a good one. Great movie. Should mention, it's available on Hulu for free. There you go. If you want to bang it out this weekend, if you hadn't done it already.

You can hear Chris Ryan on the watch. You can hear him sometimes on the big picture. You can hear him on the Ringer NBA show. on Fridays with the answer. I'm still waiting to get invited. Who'd you have on this week? Mirren Fader, Jason Gallagher, and Tyler Parker. Oh, wow.

I know all three of those people. That's great. That was last Friday's episode. Another one coming this week. We have basketball coming up. We are covering it all over the place on the ringer. We have another rewatchables coming next week. We aren't going to disappear away from you for the holidays.

So Chris Ryan. Good job by you. Talk to you soon. Thanks, buddy.