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The Bourne Identity (1988 film)
Encyclopedia
The Bourne Identity is a 1988 television movie
adaptation of Robert Ludlum's
novel The Bourne Identity.
The film follows the storyline of the novel
, with a run-time of 3 hours 5 min. With commercials added, the running time was extended to four hours, and the film was first shown on ABC
in two two-hour installments over two nights.
The film's plot exhibits some differences from that of the novel. The undercover identity of Jason Bourne is simplified. In the book, David Webb, because of his amnesia, believes himself to be Jason Bourne and an assassin called Cain. In the film, the name Cain is left out. In the film, Carlos is shown to be responsible for killing Webb's wife and child, which is not the case in the novel. Alexander Conklin is accidentally shot by his own people when attempting to kill Bourne; in the novel he survives and appears in subsequent novels. In the book's ending, Carlos escapes in the confusion, whereas in the film he is gunned down at the last moment by Bourne/David Webb. Because Carlos is the primary antagonist of the original Bourne trilogy (although only The Bourne Supremacy had been published when the film was produced), this essentially ends the story with one film.
Television movie
A television film is a feature film that is a television program produced for and originally distributed by a television network, in contrast to...
adaptation of Robert Ludlum's
Robert Ludlum
Robert Ludlum was an American author of 23 thriller novels. The number of his books in print is estimated between 290–500 million copies. They have been published in 33 languages and 40 countries. Ludlum also published books under the pseudonyms Jonathan Ryder and Michael Shepherd.-Life and...
novel The Bourne Identity.
The film follows the storyline of the novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
, with a run-time of 3 hours 5 min. With commercials added, the running time was extended to four hours, and the film was first shown on ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
in two two-hour installments over two nights.
The film's plot exhibits some differences from that of the novel. The undercover identity of Jason Bourne is simplified. In the book, David Webb, because of his amnesia, believes himself to be Jason Bourne and an assassin called Cain. In the film, the name Cain is left out. In the film, Carlos is shown to be responsible for killing Webb's wife and child, which is not the case in the novel. Alexander Conklin is accidentally shot by his own people when attempting to kill Bourne; in the novel he survives and appears in subsequent novels. In the book's ending, Carlos escapes in the confusion, whereas in the film he is gunned down at the last moment by Bourne/David Webb. Because Carlos is the primary antagonist of the original Bourne trilogy (although only The Bourne Supremacy had been published when the film was produced), this essentially ends the story with one film.