Starring Matt Damon and Tommy Lee Jones. Rated PG

With a title like Jason Bourne, you might think you’re actually getting a character portrait more than a decade into Matt Damon’s action franchise. After all, amid all the car chases and fuzzy flashbacks over the years, we’ve been waiting to find out who the amnesiac CIA defector really is.

Tantalizingly, the film opens with the rogue agent saying, “I remember everything.” (Bourne, who had his memory robbed by psychogenic amnesia, started figuring things out in the earlier Bourne Ultimatum.)

But, if anything, we get less Jason Bourne—Damon has never suppressed his charisma with such grim determination—and much more of the relentless chase scenes that have become a signature of the franchise. Set to a breathless metronome-tick soundtrack, Bourne races by motorcycle through Athens, runs through crowds in London, and bolts up stairways in Las Vegas. The only relief from the action is the stagnant shots of the suits at CIA headquarters who track every detail on high-tech screens.

That superhuman surveillance ability makes the central crisis in this tired sequel seem all the more ridiculous. Evil CIA boss Dewey (a wearily menacing Tommy Lee Jones) plans to access all the world’s personal data through a social-media network built by a tech baron (Riz Ahmed). There are nods to Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks-type intrigue, but never enough to build any real sense of doom.

Meanwhile, stern, ambitious CIA newcomer Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander, as tightly wound as her hair knot) tries to bring Dewey down, and bring Bourne in. She adds a bit of fresh tension to the sequel, but too often director Paul Greengrass subs vertigo-inducing handheld sequences for real suspense.

Hell, just getting through the dizzying chaos of Bourne’s first chase, set amid a protest in Athens, and trying to follow him through darkness, crowds, and exploding Molotov cocktails is exhausting. You start to feel as tired and beaten up as Damon’s Bourne looks.