Mr. Bourne…What have they done to you….

Mr. Bourne…What have they done to you….

A man named David Webb had lost his family in Cambodia when an unidentified air plane strafed them while they were in a river, during the course of the Vietnam War. His rage was fueled by their loss. In his rage he joined the Medusa, the untouchables of the elite corps in Vietnam. He became a killing machine. The men of Medusa had no names. He became Delta One, of Medusa.

Carlos the 'Jackal' was a legendary name in the international assassination circles by that time. Something had to be done about it. Alexander Conklin, of the Central Intelligence Agency saw the killer in Delta One and recruited him for an assignment to lure out the Jackal and eliminate him. He was to go undercover as a rival assassin challenging the supremacy of Carlos. Delta had once executed a traitor named Jason Bourne, in a suicide mission during his stint in the Medusa. Bourne was Missing In Action on paper. The man who had executed Jason Bourne took his name for this assignment which was labeled as Operation Treadstone.

Bourne’s calling cards were planted whenever a high profile assassination was undertaken in the Far East. A free agent with a panache for assassination. Bourne soon shifted his base of operations to Europe, posing a direct challenge to the Jackal. He even assumed the code name Cain. Alpha Bravo Charlie Delta… Cain’s for Charlie. Carlos was Charlie. Cain was replacing Charlie. The message was clear. Bourne's life as a provocateur had begun.

Two years had gone past since the identity of Bourne was assumed by Delta. In an encounter around that time, a bullet was fired at Delta and he ended up floating in the high seas, more dead than alive, when a fishing vessel picked him up, and an alcoholic British doctor nursed him back to his health at the Isle de Port Noir, France. Bourne had lost his memory. He was an amnesia victim. He didn't know who he was. A film embedded in his body, however, was recovered by the doctor and it revealed a Swiss bank account number and password. Bourne was on his way to recover his identity, haunted by the Jackal and the CIA, which had thought that Bourne had gone rogue. This quest for his identity has been immortalized in the Robert Ludlum classic “The Bourne Identity”.

A deadly dance between Bourne and the minions of Carlos and the Jackal himself, made the reader tense as he leafed through the pages. En route to his identity Marie St. Jacques, a Canadian economist enters his life and helps him on his way. Marie is a central character in the Bourne trilogy. “The Bourne Identity” was followed by the “The Bourne Supremacy” and “The Bourne Ultimatum”.

The second book of the series is the most gripping one of the trilogy. Bourne is blackmailed by the U.S government to return to the killing fields of Hong Kong and terminate another assassin who had assumed the name of Jason Bourne. The ultimate coercion is depicted here when his wife was kidnapped by the government to make David Webb become Delta One for its own gruesome purposes.

In “The Bourne Ultimatum”, the ghost of the erstwhile Medusa and the Jackal himself catch up with Bourne to haunt him and his family. Jason Bourne is pitted against the Jackal for the final time and the Jackal goes down in Novgorod, the very place which marked his training as an assassin, a KGB spy training compound. As Ilich Ramirez Sanchez aka Carlos the Jackal meets his end in the raging cold waters of a Russian river, the series is completed and Bourne is a tired old man, looking forward to his new lease of life.

I respect the character of Delta One. Delta is a fictional character who demands respect, and rightfully receives it from every reader. The stage has been now set for the subject matter of this post.

Two movies have been made to date, allegedly about Jason Bourne. Some of you must have had the opportunity to see “The Bourne Identity” and “The Bourne Supremacy”. The movies are quite good(if the viewer hasn't had the opportunity to read the trilogy), although the Bourne in the movies has absolutely no similarity to Delta One. The pivotal character of Carlos is also missing in both the movies. Bourne's wife, the lovely Canadian economist Marie St. Jacques Webb is depicted as a gypsy student in the first movie, and she is shot dead in the second movie. These movies make me feel like crawling into some foxhole.

The final (?) nail in Jason Bourne’s coffin came when a fourth book was released, written by another author. It was titled as “Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Legacy” by Eric van Lustbader. Lustbader is a writer renowned for his Nicholas Linnear series of novels. He is indeed a master of the Orient. However, in “The Bourne Legacy”, Lustbader insensitively treats Bourne as just another CIA rogue operative and Marie is given a passing reference, as if by an afterthought. Bourne is totally different from the man I have grown accustomed to. Has Lustbader ever read the Bourne trilogy before? I had a pretty hard time trying not to kill myself when I finished reading “The Bourne Legacy”.

Why are they destroying Mr.Bourne in such a manner? The legend of Jason Bourne was indeed so powerful that even I could try writing a sequel to the trilogy with a better result, which would keep Bourne as himself, not as a gimmick. It is very painful to see a great character being destroyed in the never ending process of profiteering.

so said -Poison- the in(s)ane one @ Monday, September 26, 2005

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