Movie of the Week: Jack Ryan, Shadow Recruit

[jacey]

Chris Pine, Kevin Costner, Keira Knightly and Kenneth Branagh -- what's not to like? This is a very enjoyable bit of fluff with a nicely rounded out central character (Pine as Ryan) and a good, if slight turn from Knightly. Excellent support from Costner and a believable villain from Branagh who also directed.

This is a Jack Ryan reboot. The character has been played in previous movies by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck, but so far no one has played the character twice. I'm not familiar with the Tom Clancy books, and only have passing familiarity with the previous movies from seeing The Hunt for Red October and Clear and Present Danger on TV years ago, but this movie is an origin movie and takes Jack back to his medical discharge from the marines following a helicopter crash in Afghanistan, his recruitment as an 'analyst' and his first live mission to find out about (and thwart) a high-stakes economic attack on the USA.

There's plenty of shoot-em-up action and the inevitable car chase through crowded Moscow streets, but Ryan's character is believable and certainly not an invincible hero.

Comments

[tommy50702.livejournal.com]

It was so boring and the final chase scene was dull. The trailer is very misleading.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I sometimes think it's a trailer's job to be misleading. Did you see A Million Ways to Die in the West? The only funny bits were in the trailer. No need to watch the movie.