"The old question of how you make spy movies or write spy thrillers after the end of the Cold War has now been replaced by the question of how you make them after Sept. 11. "The Bourne Identity" invokes a different kind of nostalgia: the memory of what it's like to go to a Hollywood movie and be treated with decency."

I was sixteen when Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity was published. It was one of the first "grown-up" novels I had read. I tore through that sucker, I loved it. I'm sort of apprehensive about the new movie, because of the casting of Matt Damon - I like him, but he just doesn't carry the weight of experience that Jason Bourne needs. And he looks like he's twelve. However, after reading this review at Salon, I may have changed my mind.