Movie Review: Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)

Here's another reboot, this time for Jack Ryan, the American James Bond (you can tell the difference because Jack's collar is generally undone and sometimes he wears jeans). Tom Clancy's hero has been played by some decent actors before in a loose series of films that include The Hunt for Red October (1990), Patriot Games (1992), Clear and Present Danger (1994), and the Sum of All Fears (2002). These are all compelling, or at least decent, political thrillers based on Clancy novels (unfortunately, my favorite Jack Ryan novel, Executive Orders, hasn't been adapted yet). This one is not adapted from a novel, and it shows. Rather than the fairly realistic political backdrop to these other Ryan films, Shadow Recruit is more or less a straightforward action film. It's not a bad action film by any means, in fact it's quite competent, but as a sequel or prequel or whatever to the Ryan series this is a fairly by-the-numbers thing that scarcely benefits from the brand name.

Ryan is an economics student who volunteers for dangerous missions in Afghanistan post-9/11. While recovering from a pretty severe injury, he falls in love with his doctor. Rushing ahead 10 years later, she's totally unaware that Ryan is now an undercover Wall Street trader tracking suspicious market activity. He's sent to Moscow to investigate some firm, and that's when a hulking fellow tries to take him out in his hotel room. Ryan drowns him in the bathtub and the plot gets hectic from that point on. Virtually all of the action scenes are organized, suspenseful, and gloriously free from sloppy handheld camera movement. This is the kind of thing reviewers would describe as "taut," and for once I'd agree with them. Shadow Recruit pushes along quite nicely and never really gets boring. It never really gets great, either.

"Pay attention to ME~!"

Thespian Kenneth Branagh is the Russian guy, truly playing it to the back of the room with his hilarious Yakov Smirnoff accent. Everyone else is fine, even Keira Knightley, playing Ryan's needy, globe hopping gal pal. She follows a fine cinematic tradition of females who get in the way of espionage. In another familiar trope of the spy genre, and there's plenty of them in Shadow Recruit, she becomes tactically useful in distracting the Russian from some fine, Grade A American data theft. As for the Ryan character, Chris Pine has all the skills necessary to channel the gruffness of a counter-terrorist operative, plus all the teddy bear qualities of a man whose girlfriend is bothering him yet again with her need for companionship and intimacy and such. I welcome anything that distracts him from playing his smarmy dickweed version of Captain Kirk in the recent Star Trek retreads. Shadow Recruit is decent. I'm not sure that the economic catastrophe plot is entirely plausible, but what's here is loud, dumb, and worth a few hours if you have little else to do.