When Ludlum originally wrote The Bourne Identity in 1980, he had the following factors in his favor:
1. A movie hadn't already been made on the book
2. People hadn't yet seen everything that was to be seen in spy movies, which was to go right down to James Bond impersonators like Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan
3. America was quite willing to believe that the CIA could be like a cobra - i. e., if it had a little more warmth
4. Zero-credibility plots still had novelty value, since the Americans still weren't saving the world in Hollywood
This remake, a second (after th....