The Snowden-tanglement of Hollywood has begun in earnest, and that's not just a coy reference to Oliver Stone's upcoming, eponymous film. The worlds of hacking, digital transparency, and bombastic espionage are all coming together whenever possible these days. And in terms of how computer savvy is employed on-screen, we've seen the good (Mr. Robot) and the bad (Spectre).

Get ready for the ugly. Jason Bourne, the fifth film in the series, hits theaters this weekend with a few very good things going for it, including a few gargantuan action sequences and some stellar lead performances from Matt Damon, Tommy Lee Jones, and Vincent Cassel. But someone at Universal clearly wanted its globe-trotting, CIA-loaded thriller to hit a bunch of cultural-relevance bullet points, and the results are some of the most embarrassing technological shoe-horning you'll see in a film this year.

Go ahead, set your laptop on fire



















Matt Damon's Bourne hasn't become a hacker since his last turn as the secret super-agent in 2007. In fact, he has checked out from anything resembling duty, instead turning to a life of... boxing to the death. (Really.) We find Bourne on the Grecian-Albanian border, busing from one bloody, bare-knuckled brawl to the next, and the only thing that interrupts his new, wholly unexplained career detour is a visit from an old CIA comrade, Nicky Parsons (played once more by Julia Stiles).

Parsons, on the other hand, has been on a hacking frenzy. We first see her hanging out at a secretive club in Reykjavik where she pulls out a beat-up laptop and connects to a CIA database. While bouncing her signal from roughly seven other nations, she downloads every file that has anything to do with the secret programs Bourne had been connected to. Conveniently, her download is immediately noticed by a massive CIA war room, at which point the whole scene erupts in shouting and '90s cybercrime gobbledygook.

This raises a few questions. Why does the CIA have a massive database of classified, years-old documents connected to the outside Internet in any fashion? Why is Parsons able to get into that database after only about 10 seconds of smacking on a keyboard into a telnet interface? How is it that the CIA can immediately discover this breach, yet it cannot suspend upload/download operations—and is therefore forced to, no kidding, cut the power out to all of Reykjavik as a last-ditch effort to block the download? (Nevermind that the scene ends with Parsons setting her laptop on fire, which isn't even the best way to remove traces of her activity. She already knows it was being traced anyway.)

The reason I bother asking these questions is that the scene is slow, plodding, and lacking in teeth—meaning, I was more eager to punch holes in the cockamamie tech-related setup than to let go and enjoy the drama.

Further Reading Matt Damon: Bourne video game too violent for me

This issue becomes the film's critical refrain, as every technology-loaded scene grinds the film's momentum to a halt. On multiple occasions, a vague social-media company called Deep Dream appears, and we're told quite clearly that it's mining the world's data on the CIA's behalf. "Gathering metadata is no longer adequate" for the sake of American security, we're told, and there's zero rebuttal about, you know, our rights.

We never find out whether Deep Dream has any direct connection to Bourne, however. Instead, we see its CEO rattle off technology buzz phrases while having his only personality emerge in the form of his stereotypical Silicon Valley exec outfit (blazer, no tie, jeans, sneakers), and we get one truly weak attempt at a moral explainer for CIA super-surveillance when this CEO tries to face off against Tommy Lee Jones (who returns debuts as CIA Director Robert Dewey).

Dewey obsesses over the possibility that Bourne will get these files and publish them on the Internet—"this could be worse than Snowden!" one CIA advisor hilariously shouts—but we soon learn that Bourne couldn't care less about any such disclosure.

When a German hacker accomplice helps Bourne decrypt Parson's files, he turns on his most sinister, snake-voiced accent while asking for copies. "People have a right to know," the hacker snarls. This serves as pretty much the only moral counterpoint to Dewey's claim that too much unmined data on the Internet "makes this a much more dangerous place" that is "much more difficult to defend."

All Bourne wants is to know more about his past; and his discoveries, the lengths he physically goes to make them, and his emotional reactions all combine to carry this film's flimsy skeleton. Without them, we are stuck with overlong computer-related sequences like the one with the German.

This paranoid, information-liberation hacker left his laptop connected to the Internet by default?

Here's how that one goes, by the way: Bourne hands off an encrypted USB key, which CIA Security Director Heather Lee (played by Alicia Vikander) has somehow infected with malware. The instant the German hacker puts this stick in his laptop, the malware activates and sends an alert directly to the CIA. So, first, this paranoid, information-liberation hacker left his laptop connected to the Internet by default. And second, the malware stick was somehow not encrypted in spite of a long, slow scene playing out earlier in which its entire contents were encrypted.

This cockamamie setup about malware gets dumber once the CIA decides that it doesn't want Bourne looking at the USB key's files. For whatever reason, this all-powerful malware can send a direct beacon to the CIA but can't delete files or interact with the computer that it has infected. Lee goes for plan B: to hack into a nearby cell phone—which, sure, go ahead, even though it's not being used and is therefore locked (which adds its own security issues, but whatever). Once she's in the phone, she uses its wireless communications to somehow break down the laptop's firewalls (which are denoted by three red bars on a giant CIA screen, meaning, three firewalls, of course).

Tone-deaf take on what Bourne's all about

Really, every scene that the character of Heather Lee touches turns to dirt. She wants us as viewers to watch overlong, inaccurate, and tension-free "hacking" sequences, complete with silly shouts like "inject the SQL!" and "enhance!" (I do always laugh when a movie includes a completely implausible image-enhancement sequence, so point to the filmmakers on that moment, I suppose.)

Anyone who plunks down for the film can at least look forward to two spectacular action sequences. The first is classic Bourne: a tension-filled battle of the wits between our favorite agent and his current nemesis, a scorned American soldier named "the Asset" (played by Vincent Cassel). This set piece includes a ton of skyscraper-scaling, sniping attempts, and trickery involving a massive crowd. The second sequence is a ludicrous car-chase scene between a military Humvee and a Dodge Charger through the crowded streets of Las Vegas, and the scene appears to contain very little CGI; it's all real-life car-crashing and building-destruction, and its length and "what the heck?" wackiness recall the glory that is the Blues Brothers' closing car chase.

Between those, a wicked verbal showdown between Bourne and Dewey, and some closure to the mysteries that have hung over confused Bourne's head for years, there's just enough here to sate any series fan's appetite. But those good moments are severe reminders that this movie's producers were totally tone-deaf in trying to make this an espionage film of the times. The Bourne series has always been at its best when making humans collide, whether via dialogue, fists, or cars. Adding a digital divide to the proceedings does nobody any favors.