PAUL GREENGRASS and Matt Damon go through the motions expertly in “Jason Bourne,” an enjoyable but also stubbornly familiar sequel. Sending the veteran super-spy on another globetrotting adventure that again pits him against the U.S. intelligence community, this follow-up to 2007’s “The Bourne Ultimatum” never matches the peaks of the original trilogy, but its smooth efficiency offers plenty of sturdy pleasures. What’s missing are the emotional underpinnings that made these movies not just top-flight action vehicles but also stirringly soulful.

    As the film begins, Bourne (Damon) is living off the grid, trying to avoid the watchful eye of CIA director Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones), who wants the onetime-assassin eliminated. But once Bourne discovers that the CIA is working on an even more ambitious spy program than the one that trained him — and that he might learn what happened to his agent father — Bourne comes out of the shadows, pursued by a ruthless hitman referred to only as The Asset (Vincent Cassel).

    Although it has been nearly a decade since Damon and Greengrass have worked on a “Bourne” film, the movie’s kinetic filmmaking and the actor’s blunt intensity feel very much in keeping with their two previous collaborations, “The Bourne Supremacy” and “The Bourne Ultimatum.” The frenetic action and jittery pace are executed skillfully by frequent Greengrass collaborators such as cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, editor Christopher Rouse (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Greengrass) and co-composer John Powell.

    But if the series’ tone and look have been faithfully reproduced, what’s harder to recreate is the original films’ sense of a haunted man seeking to unlock the mystery of his murky past. As Bourne, Damon brought not just persuasive action-movie heroics but also vulnerability and apprehension, effectively conveying a killing machine who is not quite sure how he ended up that way.

    Damon remains a sympathetic presence, but “Jason Bourne” never fully justifies Bourne’s return. The introduction of a long-dead father, who might have taken an important clue to Bourne’s past with him to the grave, feels more like a convoluted excuse for Greengrass to put Bourne through another white-knuckle thriller, rather than an organic extension of his lingering emotional scars.

    Consequently, this is the first “Bourne” film to derive almost the entirety of its entertainment value from the stylish sheen of Greengrass’s action set pieces. Damon’s Bourne is far more stoic this time around, economically dispensing with bad guys and outthinking his pursuers as always. However Greengrass and Damon do acknowledge that the actor, who turns 46 in October, is no longer the same agile young man, putting Bourne in harrowing situations where he fails, struggling mightily to stay alive.

    Jones makes for a predictably crotchety CIA director who, no surprise, has dark secrets he’ll kill to have protected. Of the new cast members in the movie, he is perhaps the least interesting — far better is Riz Ahmed as the charismatic, calculating CEO of a popular social-media company whose secret relationship with the U.S. government is crucial to the conspiracy Bourne will unravel.

    But this sequel’s most welcome addition is Alicia Vikander, who plays Heather Lee, a brilliant hacker and intelligence expert who works under Dewey, quickly realizing she should shift her loyalties towards the unfairly targeted Bourne. Essentially serving the same role Joan Allen played in earlier “Bourne” movies, Vikander is our hero’s smart, resourceful aide within America’s intelligence community, craftily undermining her boss while trying to escape detection. The Oscar-winner develops what could have been a tech-spouting side character into something more interesting, letting us marvel as Heather stealthily befriends Bourne through secretive texts and other trickery. If Bourne is the film’s brawny bruiser, she is its sly fox.

    “Jason Bourne” needs her spark since its overall structure echoes earlier installments, particularly the story’s habit of hopping from city to city. (This time, it’s Berlin to London to Las Vegas.) Even the clever action set pieces suffer a bit because they’re not terribly different from what Greengrass has accomplished before. Still, “Jason Bourne” builds to a spectacular, wonderfully overblown sequence in Sin City that involves an elaborate car chase that leads to a ferocious mano-a-mano faceoff. In these moments, the familiarity and lack of dramatic heft don’t hurt the film so much — we can sit back and just enjoy the superb craftsmanship.

    The movie is now being screened in Shenzhen. (SD-Agencies)