Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
Dir: Kenneth Branagh
2014
**
There are many aspects of Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, the fifth Jack Ryan film outing, that I admire. I liked the modern origins story, I liked the initial 'action light' espionage and I very much liked the way they handled the first time Jack Ryan kills. I liked Kenneth Branagh's bad guy and I enjoyed Kevin Costner's mentor role, although his screen time is too brief. I thought the direction and editing were also very good, who would have thought ten years ago that Branagh would be the go to man for action? Chris Pine was okay, he wouldn't have been my first choice and I was more convinced of his Captain Kirk imitation in this than I was in Star Trek but he wasn't terrible. What I didn't like so much was the inclusion of Keira Knightley aka Mrs Ryan. Her inclusion in the story served very little purpose in my mind and for such a big character as Jack Ryan is, it undermined his legend just that little bit. The previous three main Ryan films (not including The Hunt for Red October) shows Ryan as a spy to be reckoned with, here he is nothing special at all and comes across as a mere Bond/Bourne wannabe, which the character is not. The last half of the film gets a bit silly for my liking as the senseless action takes over and the sudden super spy qualities of Jack Ryan suddenly appear out of nowhere without any convincing explanation. It was all going so well too!