I’ve seen all of the Jack Ryan movies that have hit the silver screen, but have never read a Tom Clancy book. My dad read them and took me to see the Harrison Ford movies when I was younger, and we talked on and off about the character when I was growing up. So I’d say I’m a nominal Jack Ryan fan who was curious to see this new film, but didn’t have a major investment in it either way.
It feels like an unprecedented film franchise, in a sense, because of how many seemingly unrelated and unconnected entries there are. But that statement also probably sounds naïve because, for instance, a whole mess of actors have played Richard Westlake’s Parker character across the decades in many different iterations. The same goes for Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe character, and many more. But in my cinema-going lifetime, Jack Ryan has been played by Alec Baldwin (The Hunt For The Red October), Harrison Ford (Patriot Games, Clear And Present Danger), Ben Affleck (The Sum Of All Fears), and now Chris Pine in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. One could be forgiven for having trouble following all that mess.
But the producers of Shadow Recruit have conveniently side-stepped all of that by creating a flat-out reboot in all senses of the word. Shadow Recruit ignores all the other Jack Ryan films as best I can tell, and also offers a bit of an “origin story” for Tom Clancy’s most beloved patriot/agent of intrigue. Your tolerance for origin stories after this many super hero films may vary. I was always a huge sucker for origin stories growing up, but even this stalwartly-excited comic book movie fan is growing weary of spending at least a whole act on a re-tread origin for a character that literally the entire world recognizes instantly. But, Jack Ryan isn’t Spider-Man, and there is a good chance that a large portion of Shadow Recruit’s audience will never have heard of Jack Ryan or seen any of the earlier films. And so: origin story it is.
A strength of getting to know a young Jack Ryan, during his early days as a student, war veteran, and as a fresh-faced rehab patient recovering from war wounds, is that Shadow Recruit has a stripped down feel to it. Initially, the film isn’t trying to twist and turn and contort in ways you’ve never seen before. Actually, Shadow Recruit really isn’t doing ANYTHING you haven’t seen before. But the streamlined origin allows the movie to focus on a fairly small cast of characters and lets you get at least one-and-a-half to two dimensions to each of them. Even the first couple of tense, action/thriller set pieces seem to have their roots in developing our characters and teasing us with the lurid life of the CIA.
Ryan is played convincingly by Pine. I like the character and the actor chosen to take on his mantle. And I’ll say right here that I’d be totally down to watch a couple more entries in a Pine-starring series, especially if the equally pleasant to watch Kevin Costner is able to reprise his mentor role in Thomas Harper. Keira Knightley plays Cathy Muller, Ryan’s physical therapist and (later) fiancée. She is compelling in the role, but her character is certainly the most frustrating in the film, which I’ll get to later.
It is Kenneth Branagh who comes out of this project looking the best, however. For one thing, this huge international talent in front of the camera and behind has really stepped up his game as a blockbuster director. I’m sure Jack Ryan won’t rake in the dollars that Thor did, but Shadow Recruit is the better blockbuster between the two. Plus, Branagh gets to act in this film, and I had a blast with him as the steely-eyed Russian patriot and villainous mastermind Viktor Cherevin.
So I did enjoy the introduction to all these characters, and there is an extended set piece involving a break-in and file-swipe in Russia that felt really tense, balanced, and thrilling, while also maintaining that low-key, simple tone that the early film does so well. The problem is that films always have to ramp up, and the audience watches as the established human being Jack Ryan morphs all-too-quickly into the super human Jason Bourne, only without the benefit of years of training and conditioning. There are some genuinely eye-rolling moments, such as when Ryan deftly handles a motorcycle at high speeds and even pulls off some evasive maneuvers that’d shock anyone who saw them. But this super-Ryan flies in the face of the painfully human Ryan we’d seen in the rest of the movie. That is a big problem for me. It is as though screenwriters Adam Cozad and David Koepp (who wrote Jurassic Park and Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, just to give some range) just didn’t trust themselves and couldn’t follow through on the vision of a simplified story. Maybe they had a ton of pressure to amp up the action and the stakes. Either way, the finale, while nail-biting, becomes increasingly “movie-ish” and much less grounded in reality. Tense plotting takes the drivers seat and plows right on through gaping plot hole after gaping plot hole to the finish line.
I also promised to note some issues with Keira Knightley’s character. Mind you, these aren’t issues with Knightley, who acquits herself decently. But rather her character as written. Sure, she is smart and independent. And she is even given some interesting things to do story-wise when she surprises Ryan with a visit to Moscow while he is in the midst of a covert operation which she isn’t aware of. (They aren’t married, so he can’t tell her about his CIA dealings). The bummer with her character is that her plot-usefulness is relegated to first being Jack Ryan’s emotional core, then playing the enchantress decoy for Branagh’s character in a well-written sequence that still forces her to just be alluring, and lastly… she gets kidnapped (not a big spoiler or anything as, sadly, seemingly 90% of female leads in action films get kidnapped at some point) and becomes the damsel in distress. I guess it is the oldest trick in the book… but in 2014 our female characters need to get kidnapped a whole lot less. Find better motivators for our male heroes, or even better, let’s have more female heroes and let the guys get kidnapped from time to time.
At any rate, for large portions of the film I enjoyed the tighter focus on a small cast of characters. I particularly enjoyed the interplay between Pine and Costner, although it isn’t something new or different. The action was largely coherent, thrilling, and grounded (before it isn’t). Branagh got to have fun on both sides of the camera, and proves he’s got more to him than Shakespeare and possibly the worst Marvel movie. And as I mentioned previously, I think I’d be happy to buy another ticket to Jack Ryan 2: Shadow Yellow Belt.
The biggest problem this re-booted franchise is going to face, however, is an insanely crowded market full of spy/action properties. Shadow Recruit is no Bourne Trilogy. It’s not even as good as most of the entries in the Mission: Impossible franchise. But if Box Office Mojo’s figure of a $60 Million dollar budget is even remotely accurate, then it is a largely impressive feat against those larger-budgeted franchises. I’ve recently been on a kick of wanting to see more modestly budgeted franchise properties get made. Sometimes you see a huge studio tentpole and it goes down easily enough, but when the film cost $200 million, you just can’t figure out why that much had to be spent. $60 million is no chump change, but the scale, the cast, and the director worked together in spite of a frustrating screenplay and built a modestly budgeted and moderately entertaining popcorn film. I would be surprised if America rejects this perfectly acceptable thrill ride, which makes profit very likely, and gets Jack’s Yellow Belt green-lit post-haste: voila, an instant mid-budget franchise is launched!
I took my wife along with me, knowing that a mainstream, January-released action-thriller wouldn’t be something she would hate. And I was right. And if I rated movies based on how many times my tensed-up wife flailed out and hit me during the screening, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit would get at least 8 “punch points”. Easily digestible yet easily forgotten, Jack Ryan will entertain you with tension and chemistry and will then pleasantly fade from your memory.
And I’m Out.