Jack Ryan: A Shadow of His Former Self

Chris Pine is the latest incarnation of Jack Ryan, following Ben Affleck, Harrison Ford and Alec Baldwin, in Kenneth Branagh’s vapid and toothless spy thriller ‘Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.’  A departure from previous Jack Ryan movies, ‘Shadow Recruit’ is a reboot of the popular Tom Clancy character and focuses on his backstory and induction into the cloak-and-dagger world of the CIA.

 

While Jack Ryan is very much a byproduct of ‘80’s Cold War tensions and anxieties between the US and USSR in the late author’s novels, that simply wouldn’t wash in our post-9/11 world.  The character had to be remade in order to mesh with today’s realities and sensibilities.  Hence, Jack Ryan was a student studying Economics in London on September 11, 2001 and, like many other fine young Americans, he promptly dropped out of college pursuing his graduate degree and joined the Marines to dish out some payback.  In parallel to the novels, he survived a helicopter incident but due to a bad back resulting from it had to return to civilian life.  A Navy commander (Kevin Costner) notices and woos him to work undercover for the CIA on Wall Street because, in our age of Wikileaks and Edward Snowden, economic intelligence is “where it’s at.”  Jack Ryan’s first adventure is to stop a ruthless Russian businessman played by Branagh himself who sought to wreak economic catastrophe on the US ‘on a scale not encountered since The Great Depression,’ as Ryan repeatedly tried to convince Kevin Costner.  Yawn.

 

Even if we overlook this unlikely premise of devaluing the mighty dollar and crashing the US economy in one fell swoop, the movie stumbled in the only area that mattered by failing to deliver the taut, tightly paced espionage thriller we expected.  Far from a crackerjack action flick, 'Shadow Recruit' only succeeded in being uninspired, tedious and clichéd.  There’s nothing here that you haven’t seen in other, better movies before.  And the performances are subpar too, from Chris Pine going through the motions as the titular hero to Keira Knightley’s cookie-cutter damsel-in-distress to Branagh’s horrible impression of just about every Bond-ish caricature villain you’ve ever seen, accents and all. 

 

Utterly forgettable, predictable and unnecessary, to call this lifeless movie ‘Bond or Bourne-lite’ is being too kind.  If this is supposed to kick off a new Jack Ryan franchise, the engine just coughed, sputtered and died upon ignition.  RIP Tom Clancy Jack Ryan.

 

Grade: C- 

I watched this, so you won't have to.