Jack Ryan has been played before by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck. Now, it’s Star Trek man Chris Pine’s turn to play the CIA analyst created by Tom Clancy in a string of potboilers.
Kenneth Branagh, drafted in to helm the ship as well as play the film’s Big Bad, a technocrat whose dastardly plan is to ruin the USA’s financial recovery with a spot of economic terrorism and stock dumping, directs with an initial emphasis on Ryan staring at his laptop and furrowing his brow as bad data crosses the shadow recruit’s desk. Yes, it’s more a case of paper clips than gun clips. The cold-war has become the cyber-war, people. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit could also have gone by the title Jack Ryan: Patriotic Business Analyst. But don’t worry, things get a bit hairy in the second and third acts, with a dinner date at a posh restaurant and spot of espionage that involves Ryan breaking into an office and ripping a drive using a memory stick.
Ageing backwards à la Benjamin Button, Ryan has been reimagined as a cross between Jefferson Smith (from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) and everyman action dude, John McClane. Yes, he’s an Ordinary Joe type (though university educated) who just wants to serve his country and protect it from evildoers.
The cloak and dagger second act is exciting enough, but bookended by a dull first one and a routine action finale. And why on earth Keira Knightley accepted ‘the girlfriend role’ is positively flummoxing. Did she believe that when Branagh telephoned and asked her to play ‘Cathy’, that he meant Wuthering Heights?
Regarding Cathy Muller (Knightley), not only does the movie lift a subplot from True Lies (1994), it was near enough the same one used very recently by JJ Abrams for Mission: Impossible III (2006). Not all film fans have the memories of goldfish or coked-up execs, Hollywood! It makes for very lazy writing.
Pine does have a certain folksy charisma, but he’s no match for the memory of Harrison Ford’s grizzled, middle-aged Ryan shouting down the president in Clear and Present Danger (still the best of the series).
