Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)

Is Chris Pine the king of the rebooters?  After helming a very profitable new take on Star Trek, Pine’s been tapped to lead a post-9/11 reboot of Tom Clancy’s “Jack Ryan” espionage/thriller franchise.  Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, the first in what I can only assume is a series, is quite successful and engaging, even if it doesn’t forge new ground in the genre.

The film follows fresh-faced Jack Ryan (Pine), just off a tour of duty in Afghanistan as a Marine.  After undergoing extensive physical therapy and wooing his therapist Cathy (Keira Knightley), Ryan is recruited by Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner) to join the CIA.  Ten years later, Ryan’s undercover work on Wall Street exposes a plot to undermine the US economy, a conspiracy directed by Russian capitalist Viktor Cherevin (Kenneth Branagh).

Branagh pulls double-duty as villain and director here, and I would like to pause for a moment and ask the second question in this review:  when did Kenneth Branagh become a sterling action film director?  Short answer:  Thor.  But Jack Ryan proves that wasn’t a one-time fluke, a suitable hybrid of superhero throwdown with Branagh’s more comfortable Shakespearean swagger.  Jack Ryan proves Branagh a solid director of action sequences, culminating in an immensely suspenseful final hour or so of the film.

As the villain, Branagh refrains from noshing on the scenery and instead opts for cold and unpredictable; it’s a refreshing alternative to the bloviating Bond villain caricature we could have gotten.  Pine is credible as a first-time operative, particularly gifted in a key scene after his first kill, and Costner is a reliable choice for the stern senior agent.  Knightley’s beautiful as ever, though her American accent is a little too on-the-nose valley girl to be entirely believable.

I’ve praised the action scenes in the film, and boy do they deliver.  From a car chase with the threat of gruesome torture ahead to an intense close-quarters bathroom fight, Branagh turns in a film so capable that I’m eager to see him return for a Jack Ryan sequel to see what else he can do at play in the genre.  What I’d like to see more, though, is a little bit of innovation.  As successful as it is, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is very much a paint-by-numbers spy thriller.  The classic beats are all there.  Post 9/11 film?  9/11 motivates character to serve his country.  Female character?  Hostage.  And even though the economic plot is a bit creative for a spy action film, it all amounts in the end to blowing something up.

One glaring weakness in the film is Ryan’s downright lack of a personality.  It’s easy enough to vicariously enjoy the film through him, but we never really get a reason to care about him beyond the unsuccessful pathos of a quick bout of physical therapy.  Pine plays a less cocky Captain Kirk here, devoid of the personality that made Star Trek a worthwhile hero’s-quest narrative.  There’s nothing really unique about his methods, nothing that sets him apart other than us knowing that Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford played him before.  Hopefully the sequel rectifies that and clears up Ryan’s place in the espionage pantheon.

It remains to be seen, then, what kind of a spy Jack Ryan will become.  The economic angle is promisingly creative, but even if the writers fall back on a spy sans personality, Branagh’s capable hand at the directorial till delivers an engaging (if not cerebral) suspense film full of the good old eyeball kicks.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is rated PG-13 “for sequences of violence and intense action, and brief strong language.”  The violence is certainly more intense than bloody, and much of it deals more with the threat of menace than with actual spurts of the red stuff.  An F-bomb or two gets dropped, but it’s pretty tame in terms of language.