Film Review: Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

"You're not just an analyst anymore, you're operational now." - Kevin Costner

Throughout the Cold War era and the aftermath, Jack Ryan has been the heart of Tom Clancy's spy thrillers.  On film, Jack's adventures were at their most thrilling in The Hunt For Red October; they reached some decent emotional heft in Patriot Games; it ultimately ended with a lackluster note in The Sum of All Fears.  After all these years, a reboot with Ryan in the modern age (an age of terrorism, globalization, and increasingly-advanced information technology) was inevitable.  With a stronger focus on the character's origins, this film looked to be a promising new start on a stagnant (and perhaps outdated) saga.

The film has its share of thrills and action.  It moves at a fairly even pace, with a few major chases and shoot-outs.  Ultimately, the action never really stood out; it actually became rather muddled and gaudy, thanks to some ugly camerawork and editing.  I found the infiltration scenes to be the most suspenseful and thrilling, but they never really offered anything new to the table.  That just leaves the characters and their dynamics as the big standouts in this film.

Jack Ryan's character is at his strongest in this film, largely because he was given little depth in the original four films to begin with.  The first half of Shadow Recruit covers his origins pretty decently, and it follows Tom Clancy's original tales to a point.  It is pretty noteworthy to watch the guy overcome physical therapy and rise to the challenge of becoming a CIA analyst, and eventually a spy.  When the film's second half hits, however, everything slumps back into standard spy-movie territory, complete with a cliched, megalomaniac villain orchestrating a cliched, megalomaniac plot.  The idea of economic disaster is interesting and perhaps relevant, but its execution is very much more of the same.  The film ultimately strains believability by its end, as a number of contrivances emerge at the plot's convenience to speed things up to the climax (including the convenient appearance of other spies to help Jack along, and the convenient last-minute analysis of everything to figure out the endgame).  In the end, the story became more of the same; the best that can be said is that the characters are somewhat endearing, and the relationship between Jack and Cathy drives a good part of the story's dynamic.

This film has pretty good photography in some areas, but it becomes very hideous in the action scenes, due to some extreme camera shaking.  Editing is okay most of the time, but was rather poor in the action scenes, as they strung together a lot of the images in a haphazard way (and in some cases, cut up some shots erratically for style points).  In some scenes, it was obvious that the dialogue was over-dubbed, and I found it distracting.  Acting is okay; Chris Pine does his best to be earnest and heartfelt, and I think he's a decent match for Jack's character (miles better than Ben Affleck, maybe arguable when compared with Alec Baldwin or Harrison Ford).  I enjoyed Kiera Knightley's performance, Kevin Costner is pretty much himself, and Kenneth Branagh plays a pretty standard bad guy.  Writing is okay, but it does spell things out pretty blatantly in certain scenes.  This production uses sets, props, and costumes that appear slick, but are simultaneously dark and drab.  Patrick Doyle's music score is pretty cool.

Jack Ryan:  Shadow Recruit is nowhere near as much of a game-changer as Casino Royale was to James Bond; if anything, this film proved to be, simply, more of the same.  Fans of the character and fans of spy fiction might get a kick out of this, but otherwise, it doesn't really offer anything really profound or groundbreaking.

3/5 (Entertainment:  Pretty Good | Story:  Average | Film:  Average)