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Jason Bourne 12A cert, 123 min

In his latest outing as Jason Bourne, Matt Damon once again plays the amnesiac assassin fighting for control of his own moral compass in an era of governmental misdeeds being swept under the carpet. Having been in hiding for several years, Bourne is dragged back into the fray when his old analyst-ally Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) triggers a security breach, digging out new information about the defunct Treadstone project that originally trained him. It looks like the end of the line for a dinosaur such as the CIA’s present director, Robert Dewey, played with secreted vitriol by Tommy Lee Jones. Searching every warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse that state-of-theart global surveillance can now pinpoint, he wants all trace of Bourne wiped away for ever. So far, so good. But where’s the novelty? When Bourne and Nicky flee across a riot-torn Athens, it’s pure Tangier from The Bourne Ultimatum. And when Dewey broods over his grisly career in a hotel suite, Jones is replaying the scene Brian Cox had in the second film in the franchise, merely swapping Berlin for Las Vegas. There are some satisfyingly adrenalised setpieces, especially a motorbike sequence ripping through Athens. Rarer are the moments, though, when Bourne feels fully in charge of his own narrative. Subject to all the same plot mechanisms as before, Damon’s like an abused hamster in a cage, running towards an exit the series just won’t give him. Same cage, different geopolitics. He needs a new cage.