Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is a 2014 thriller about a young covert CIA analyst who uncovers a Russian plot to crash the U.S. economy with a terrorist attack.
The Jack Ryan series is a long and somewhat rocky collection of movies, beginning with 1990’s well-received The Hunt for Red October, which introduced the character starring Alec Baldwin, who was replaced in the next two following films, Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger, with Harrison Ford. These three films were all quite successful and are considered the core trilogy. As a set, even with different leads, they are an exciting and well-made bunch of thrillers.
READ MORE: That Moment In The Hunt For Red October
Rebooted again in 2002 with The Sum of All Fears, this time staring with Ben Affleck as Ryan, it seemed to be a young, fresh take on the character, though Affleck’s performance was often cited as its largest weakness, lacking the presence of the more authoritative Ford. The movie did well enough, but failed to catch on with audiences and critics, the franchise once again falling dormant. It that film, a nuclear bomb destroys Baltimore in a pretty unnerving moment, ramping up the stakes that The Hunt for Red October only led us to the brink of. Where could the series go from there?
In 2014, the same producers from all four previous films, led by Mace Neufeld, went back to the drawing board in hopes of redeveloping the character and spinning the franchise in a new direction. Sticking with a young version of Ryan, going even younger than Affleck, Chris Pine was cast in the lead and the story trimmed back from the more literal explosive elements of the previous films to a more techno-driven information-based bit of terrorism, even as a minor thread involving a bomb shows up anyway. However, the film performed under expectations, being the least financially successful in the entire run of the series, leaving many critics divided, and a studio forced to end it all again. Even still, there’s some fun to be had. Let’s explore.
READ MORE: That Moment In Clear and Present Danger
The story begins with college student Jack Ryan (Pine) in London, learning about the 9/11 attack on New York City. This motivates him to quit school and joins the Marines, becoming a lieutenant while fighting in Afghanistan. It’s there where he is injured when his helicopter is shot down, breaking his back. Back in the states, undergoing lengthy physical therapy, he falls in love with Catchy (Kiera Knightley), a medical student who motivates him with potential romance. Meanwhile, he is being scouted by a high level agent in the CIA named Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner), who sees great potential in his abilities as an analyst, eventually getting him on board as a secret operative in Wall Street to search for suspicious financial transactions that might be funding another act of terror.
More than a decade years later, now living with but not married to Cathy, Jack notices something unusual with the markets after the Russian Federation loses an important vote in the United Nations, soon discovering that billions of dollars held by Russians have simply disappeared, leading him to suspect a Russian tycoon named Viktor Cherevin (Kenneth Branagh) might be involved, someone Ryan’s company has business dealings with. This has him flying to Moscow under Harper’s orders, meant to audit him but also uncover what looks to be a plot against the United States. However, when Jack arrives, things immediately go sour, his life threatened, and Cherevin seemingly already onto the investigation. When Cathy shows up in a grand romantic gesture, hoping to figure out why Ryan is acting strangely, things get even more complicated … and deadly.
Directed by Branagh, and the first film in the series not based on a book by the late Tom Clancy, who invented the character, Shadow Recruit has a lot going for it in terms of updating itself to more modern themes, even as it plays mostly in the shallow end. The idea of money leading to terror is smart and authentic, though in truth, not all that exciting in a genre built on more physical action. Granted, the filmmakers do their best to punch up scenes of people sitting at computers transferring data and talking in financial double-talk, with longtime film composer and Branagh regular confederate Patrick Doyle contributing a rousing score to the all this, though it never quite engages as it should.
READ MORE: The Greatest Ambush in Cinematic History
Still, other opportunities arise that give Pine chance to knock some heads about, which surely modern audiences might better relate too, however when you compare this with the Ford era, and his more strategic and diplomatic approach, it makes for a wide chasm to cross for fans of the past entries. That said, Pine is well cast. He’s a strong, physical guy and while he handles the heavy technical dialogue convincingly, it’s when he’s on the run and chasing those he needs to stop where the film finds it best momentum. Costner is fun, too, if limited, making for a sturdy leader.
It’s too bad the writers couldn’t do something more productive with Knightley though, she pretty much sidelined to be the in-the-dark girlfriend who suspects Ryan is cheating on her, only to become entangled right in the thick of it, a trope James Cameron was spoofing all the way back in 1994’s True Lies. Most anything anyone ever does around her is comment how attractive she is. She does what she can with it, but ends up an obvious plot device that has little impact on the story, even if she is central to a key chase midway through the film.
While Shadow Recruit is straight-forward and pretty thinly developed, with dialogue and set pieces staged and delivered fast and full of exposition, Branagh keeps the pace brisk and the action beats well timed. In Ford’s day, it was about relationships, though with Pine, it’s about energy at all costs, Branagh refusing to take a breath, something that probably works best since pausing too long would reveal the weaknesses in the story. Shadow Recruit isn’t a bad movie, far from it. It’s just perfunctory, clicking all the buttons in a row so that we are properly entertained. Pine won’t get the chance to build on what he did here, the studio dropping all plans for continuing with the franchise, instead, Neufeld, along with Michael Bay, heading to Amazon Prime with a new television series starring John Krasinski as Ryan scheduled for release this summer. Evolution is fine, but perhaps its time Jack Ryan stayed in the past.