At one time you could have called the superhero movie a
niche or facet of the action genre, but as time has gone it has become the
premier trend, whereas once, the spy thriller might have been a more profitable
action trope. Films like “Goldeneye”, “Mission Impossible”, and of course the
Tom Clancy Jack Ryan espionage features like “Clear and Present Danger” and
“Patriot Games” were considered a kind of thinking man’s blockbuster that
showcased a masculine hero who, while resourceful and highly skilled, wasn’t endowed
with extra-human abilities. Instead, these films exploited the political and social
paranoia’s of their time and blew them up to dramatically satisfying heights.
But since then the world has changed and so has the demographics.
Jack
Ryan, once played by an aging Harrison Ford, is now embodied by Chris Pine,
also known as the younger, sexier Captain Kirk in the recent “Star Trek”
reboots. In the new origin story “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit”, Pine and his
director Kenneth Branagh, the actor/director known primarily for his on-screen
Shakespeare adaptations, come together to dig up the grave of the spy-game
potboiler for a younger, perhaps less-patient audience. Their attempt, while
hardly groundbreaking or innovative in any way, is more or less successful,
though not without a few uneven results.
While getting his PHD at Cambridge
University in England, Jack Ryan witnesses the terrorism of 911 and enlists as a Marine, where he’s later injured in Afghanistan. He works
tirelessly to get back on his feet with his physical therapist turned fiancé,
played by Keira Knightley, and it’s at this time that he is approached and
recruited by a vetted member of the CIA (Kevin Costner). His special mission is to work undercover as a
wall-street banker, where he can keep an eye on shadowy trading between
countries that could lead to another attack on American soil.
Branagh
steps out from behind the camera as Viktor Cherevin, a Russian oil tycoon who
plans on building a pipeline to Turkey, where he can sell vast amounts of
company stock, which, when triggered by another American bombing, will destroy
our crippled economy…or something like that.
The
plot of this movie is silly and so socially aware and stuffed with recent news-bites that
Jack Ryan practically becomes a CIA Forrest Gump; conveniently connected to
911, the middle-eastern wars, sleeper cell terrorism, Wall Street, and the global
economy. Most of the tension is built by
scenes where characters are looking at computer screens waiting for stock to
sell or jump-drives to load, and, for the most part, none of it makes much sense.
But this isn’t supposed to be believable, it’s supposed to be fun, and
for the most part it is, just not when it thinks it is.
Branagh
works through the scripts lazy plotting and decides to direct this in the style
of campy, Roger Moor era James Bond film. His acting work as the villain is so
delightfully over-the-top he might as well be stroking a white cat with every
scene he’s in. The conversations the dubious Branagh and Pine as our likable rooky
hero are attention grabbing and well-rehearsed, as well as the dialogue driven scenes
shared by Pine and Kevin Costner as his CIA confidant and Knightley as his
worried, out-of-the-loop lover. The
action set-pieces however are handled with only enough skill to keep the movie
afloat, but are mostly minor and unmemorable.
As a classically trained actor
and director Branagh wisely turns this by-the-numbers actioner into a character-centric
B-movie. It isn’t a remarkable or note-worthy film, but it basically works as a
light and agreeable attempt at a pre-Bourn espionage throwback. The screenplay ultimately
prevents it from hitting the franchise-generating bull’s-eye it’s aiming for,
but the film will likely entertain just fine as a stay-at-home Netflix time-waster.
Grade: C+
Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Jan-2013
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