The Bourne Malignancy (2004)
Directed by John R. Morris
Written by Daniel Raymond & Earl Yarbrough

I was confused when I stopped by the video store on the way home from seeing The Bourne Supremacy and noticed this dubious-looking DVD on the new-release shelf. Though it bears a 2004 copyright date, nothing about the cover art seemed current … it was about as professional-looking as those low-budget transfers of forgotten old movies-of-the-week that you run across in the DVD budget-bin at Rite Aid. The shoddy photo of Matt Damon on the cover was clearly from when Damon was a teenager, and the font was the sort of florid script they use on independently-released documentaries about acupuncture or meditation.

Of course, my curiosity was piqued, since I enjoyed Supremacy so much. I figured maybe it was a weird marketing tie-in like those animated Riddick and Van Helsing movies that suddenly appeared a few weeks before the theatrical releases of those actual films.

Not the case. If anything, The Bourne Malignancy is a clear case of proprietary infringement on just about every level. Someone seems to have taken an unreleased drama made for Canadian TV around '89 (judging from the accents and the fashion choices) that happens to star Matt Damon (or someone who looks and talks very much like him), and scammed it into the marketplace with a clearly misappropriated title. Damon's character, a teen fighting leukemia, isn't even named "Bourne" … though they do dub that name over the soundtrack every time his character's name is used. The problem is, they didn't mute the original soundtrack, so you can clearly hear him being called "Randy," but with a booming "BOURNE" pasted over the top. The effect is jarring.

The only other attempt the producers seem to have made to provide the illusion of this being an actual Bourne movie is a single title-card before the opening credits that reads "Several years before THE BOURNE IDENTITY AND THE BOURNE SUPREMECY …" (sic). So I suppose we're supposed to believe this is a prequel, which is strange, since Damon's character dies at the end.

The film itself is competent enough, about on par with any CBC afterschool special I've seen, but the sense of being taken in by such a badly-executed ruse just made me mad. Even worse is the DVD's special "CASE FILES" menu, which has been designed to look like CIA dossier files about the Bourne character, but which actually just consists of two pages of Matt Damon's film credits, apparently copied from a website circa 1999, seeing as the last movie it lists is Rounders.

It's only a matter of time before Universal Pictures, Matt Damon, and/or Robert Ludlum slaps an injunction on whomever put this piece of shit out. As much as I find the idea of Jason Bourne taking on his worst enemy yet (the big C), this is just a big rip-off.

Review by La Fée