On paper, “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” sounds like an exciting action thriller: The CIA recruits a young Ryan to look for suspicious financial transactions. When he uncovers something, he becomes responsible for not only stopping a terrorist planning to reduce Wall Street to rubble but also a related economic attack that could bring about the financial collapse of the U.S.
On the screen, “Jack Ryan” is improbable and dull. Part of the problem is director Kenneth Branagh, a talented filmmaker whose skills with actors and drama are at cross-purposes with the material. The movie is visually lifeless, and the action seems to have been assembled from bits of film randomly pulled out of a Cuisinart. People run, cars race across the screen, ammunition clips are emptied, and punches are thrown, but the whole thing looks like a big, confusing blur. There’s one capably assembled sequence during which Ryan attempts to steal data from the villain’s computer, but despite Branagh’s considerable effort, it generates little suspense.
The film’s biggest problem, though, is its script. “Jack Ryan” is the fifth film to star the titular character, given life in a series of popular Tom Clancy novels that were turned into hit movies, including “The Hunt for Red October,” “Patriot Games,” and “The Sum of All Fears.” It’s also the first to feature a storyline based not on a novel but an original script.
They should have stuck with the novels. The storyline in “Jack Ryan” is routine, uninventive, and lacks surprises. I had trouble staying awake, and I’d had a solid night’s sleep.
The opening scenes of “Jack Ryan” introduce us to a young Ryan, a student at the London School of Economics. Although a brilliant doctoral candidate, he puts his studies on hold and joins the Marines after 9/11, demonstrating his love for and dedication to his country. Fast forward a few years to the inside of a helicopter over Afghanistan, where Ryan shows his bravery by pulling two fellow soldiers to safety after the chopper is hit by enemy fire and crashes. Fast forward a few months to a physical rehabilitation clinic, where Ryan displays grit and determination by refusing to give up when others aren’t sure he’ll walk again.
The writers use the clinic setting to its fullest, as Ryan meets both his wife, Cathy (Keira Knightley), and his future employer, Thomas (Kevin Costner), there. The latter watches Ryan slowly, painfully rise off the ground after a fall, and decides he’d make a good financial analyst for the CIA.
Ten years later, Ryan is ostensibly working as a compliance officer at a stock brokerage, though his real job is sniffing out suspicious financial transactions. Presumably, there wasn’t another desk or computer available at the CIA, which in a later scene is shown to have access to nearly every information device in the world, but never mind.
After the U.S. votes against Russia on an important matter at the UN, Ryan notices that trillions of dollars held by Russian organizations have disappeared, making the U.S. economy vulnerable. The money is under the control of Viktor Cheverin, a veteran of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Cheverin and a group of key Russian politicians are bitter about the UN vote, and are seeking revenge. Since Ryan’s firm does business with Cheverin, Ryan gets to go to Russia to investigate the matter.
The plot continues, but not without a number of improbabilities, the least of which is Ryan killing a very large and very armed Nigerian body guard Cheverin sent to assassinate him. Branagh cheats by using lots of shaky handheld shots that fail to show how Ryan wins the fight.
Then there’s the scene in which Ryan and a team of analysts sit at their computers, and within minutes are able to determine the identity and location of a sleeper agent in the U.S. It’s one of those sequences in which someone strings together unrelated bits of information and makes huge leaps of logic, and for every piece of obscure data he says he needs, someone typing furiously into computer immediately screams, “Got it!”
I also wonder why the CIA thinks Ryan is the only one capable of taking out Cheverin, and doing it alone, for that matter, but again - never mind.
I told my dad “Jack Ryan” might be worth watching if he stumbles across it on cable in a few years, but beyond that, it isn’t worth his time. I’m telling you the same.
Two stars out of four. Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and intense action, and brief strong language.