‘Jason Bourne’ packs plenty of thrills but lacks storytelling punch

You don’t buy a ticket for a Jason Bourne movie for its social commentary.

You do it for the chases and the carnage.

And on those counts — sweet Margaret, mother of mayhem! — “Jason Bourne” delivers. Especially during the much-hyped action sequence that travels up, down and around the Strip.

The script, from director Paul Greengrass and Christopher Rouse, tries to tackle the whole privacy-vs.-public safety debate, with the CIA funding a social media platform to spy on pretty much everyone, everywhere. It’s a timely message, but most of it gets lost in the pursuit of yet another pursuit of America’s most lethal weapon.

When we see Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) for the first time since 2007’s “The Bourne Ultimatum,” he’s on the Greek-Albanian border as part of a shabby, desert fight card. Bourne knocks out his opponent with one punch in less time than it took him to wrap his fists. The rest of “Jason Bourne” is about as subtle. And as brutal.

Meanwhile, Bourne’s longtime ally, Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles), is getting her Snowden on at a hacking compound in Iceland. She’s downloading all the black-ops files from the CIA in hopes of exposing them once and for all. But when she stumbles across documents linked to Bourne and his father (Gregg Henry), the CIA’s former Beirut station chief, Nicky risks her life to surface and try to help Bourne finally find some peace.

They’re both older and wearier now, and the years of their shared history are summed up in a complex, emotional greeting that doesn’t need any words. It’s a good thing, because Bourne has almost run out of them. About as chatty as he gets is when Nicky tells him she has the files and plans to release them online. “What’s that got to do with me?” he asks. “All that matters is staying alive. You go off the grid. Survive.”

Back in Washington, CIA director Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones) wants Bourne dead at any cost and has enlisted an assassin known simply as The Asset (Vincent Cassel) to get the job done. Unlike past Bourne adversaries, this time it’s personal. When Bourne helped release files on the previous clandestine operations, The Asset was undercover in Syria, where he was exposed, captured and tortured for two years.

Dewey’s underling, Heather Lee (“The Danish Girl” Oscar winner Alicia Vikander), has other plans. She’s read Bourne’s psych reports that were compiled when he left the agency, and she’s convinced she can bring him back into the fold.

Jones is the latest in a distinguished line of Bourne foils that has included Brian Cox, Chris Cooper, David Strathairn and Joan Allen. And he seems to be having a ball — as much as Tommy Lee Jones can have a ball — toying with Vikander’s Lee. She reluctantly teams with Bourne because they both want Dewey gone, albeit for different reasons.

But, with the exception of a handful of scenes where we see just how broken Bourne has become, still shuffling through his old collection of passports, and how he’s haunted by the bombing death of his father — sometimes amnesia isn’t such a bad thing — that’s pretty much where the acting ends.

Bourne’s still lethal. Even after all these years, he could fight a dozen men inside a phone booth — if he could still find a phone booth. But where the first three installments were smarter and more interested in storytelling, “Jason Bourne” is all about the spectacle.

During a political uprising in Athens, Greece, Bourne steals a motorcycle and flees for his life, pursued by police and The Asset through tight alleys, among firebombs, riot squads and burning couches raining down from above.

For most “Bourne” movies, that would be enough. But that, and plenty of tailing — so, so very much tailing — are all just leading up to the roughly 35 minutes spent in Las Vegas as part of a hacker convention that builds to the wildest chase the Strip has ever seen.

It’s a jaw-dropping, sensory-overloading wonderland of stunts, high-speed pursuits and real, honest-to-goodness crashes — none of that computer-generated nonsense — that culminates in the lobby of the Riviera.

The scene will go down in Vegas movie history and, just by itself, is worth the price of admission.

Unfortunately, the rest of “Jason Bourne” — an entertaining, late-summer diversion — doesn’t measure up to its predecessors.

It could have, though, if only writer-director Greengrass had spent as much time developing the script as he did all of the madness on the Strip.

But rather than complain (too much), it’s best to just sit back and enjoy the ride.

Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com. On Twitter: @life_onthecouch