Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

Jack Ryan was not born to be an action hero, even if he had a healthy respect for them. Ryan first appeared in The Hunt for Red October, published in 1984 by the U.S. Naval Institute Press (because nobody else thought readers would be interested in that kind of technical minutiae), for which Tom Clancy was reportedly paid $5,000. In the midst of the Clinton era, the settings of the novels shifted from actual history to America's imagined future. Ryan became the Commander-in-Chief with whom conservative readers desperately wanted to replace the one they had in real life.

But even then, our hero gave executive orders, rather than carrying them out himself. A decade and a half before 9/11, Ryan morphed from analyst to hawkish political sugar daddy, giving those who fought America's enemies a mandate and the necessary funding to unleash righteous anger. Clancy loved his supersoldiers, to be sure, but Ryan was never—until today—one of them.

Image: Paramount Pictures

Keira Knightley and Kenneth Branagh in 'Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit'

What happened?

Hollywood, mostly, which has little room for heroes or stories that are much different from the ones we got a week before. Jack Ryan isn't such a beloved character that reimagining him would feel sacrilegious. And the character we get in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is not the complete antithesis of his literary namesake.

It's just that "reimagining" feels and sounds like too generous a word for a movie this generic. David Koepp, who wrote this film along with Adam Cozad, also wrote for Mission: Impossible, Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Panic Room, Spider-Man, War of the Worlds, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdomof theCrystal Skull.

Those are some wildly successful and well-plotted movies, but they aren't exactly character driven. And the ones that revolve around established characters do little to flesh them out. The Koepp formula is simple: get objects in motion and let Newton's first law take over from there. Similarly, with little more than Microsoft Word's "search and replace" function, Shadow Recruit's story easily could have been Bourne 5 or another Mission: Impossible film.

There's not much to say about the story. The Russians want to send America into the second great depression by combining insider trading with a well-placed car bomb. Why? No reason exactly, other than international jealousy and the possibility that playing a Bond-style villain may be the only thing Branagh could think of to make the six people in America who didn't watch Thor forget he is the greatest Shakespearean actor of his generation. When Ryan notices a pattern of suspicious financial accounts, he goes off to Moscow to investigate.

That's the set-up, but the movie itself could have been set pretty much anywhere. Ryan's fiancée, finding out that her boyfriend is a spy, says what any self-respecting American woman would: doesn't she get to play too? So there's flirting at a restaurant. There's needlessly complicated stealing of keys and codes. There's downloading of computer files as handlers whisper into earpieces that the hero needs to leave now. And, of course, there's a digital display on a bomb's detonator that ticks down as the hero fights a madman with his finger on the button. Even the visual palette is generic: chrome and black with lots of glass for the banking district, rain to reflect the teal lights at night, and an amber hue for domestic interiors.

The director does seem to attract great casts, though. Kevin Costner brings just a touch of playfulness to his role as Ryan's mentor. He never quite winks at the audience, but neither does he demand that we take him or the film seriously.

Keira Knightley's rendition of Cathy Muller (soon-to-be Ryan) has more in common with Jamie Lee Curtis in True Lies than Anne Archer from Patriot Games or Clear and Present Danger. It would probably no longer be politically correct to simply have Cathy be the soldier's reason for fighting and reward for coming home. They also serve who recklessly endanger themselves and others in order to interject an element of uncertainty into an operation dependent on training and precision. Knightley is one of the most consistently interesting actresses working today, and she is coming off a string of movies—A Dangerous Method, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, Anna Karenina, and Can a Song Save Your Life?—that underscore her dramatic and comedic range. But Cathy's a prop, not a character, and we're never quite convinced she is as jealous of Jack as the script says she is.

Image: Paramount Pictures

Kevin Costner and Chris Pine in 'Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit'

Unfortunately, all the star wattage in the supporting roles only serves to illuminate how flat and mundane the protagonist is. It's not entirely Chris Pine's fault. Genre pictures these days are much more interested in villains anyway. Villains get origins; heroes get back stories. Here's Ryan's: he saw 9/11 on television and signed up to do some good. He requested the most dangerous combat missions and only became an analyst when he was injured in the line of duty. He had only three weeks on "the farm" to train, but when the bullets start flying he takes to Mortal Kombat like Mozart to a piano.

This reincarnation of Ryan as some kind of savant is the most puzzling and depressing way the movie reimagines him. Clancy believed in and depicted unapologetically the superiority of American soldiers and the way of life they fought to preserve and protect. But that superiority came from a dedication to training and years of experience guided by an innate moral compass.

The new Ryan is the sort of guy who can be in dropped into a roomful of trained professionals and see the small detail that everyone else missed. Unable to make him look intrinsically smart, the screenplay settles for making everyone else dumb so he will look good by comparison.

Worse, his stubborn idealism, Ryan's defining trait, only shows up in contrast to everyone else's dulled moral sensibilities. For instance, Ryan's Wall Street boss, unaware that he is a government agent, cautions Ryan not to look too deeply into the finances of their business' Russian partners, since the lack of laws in the former Soviet Union is what let the company profit. Earlier, Ryan mumbles something when he is recruited about the CIA not being too popular these days because of waterboarding and all that. But he quickly learns that if you put your life on the line, it is okay to dismiss the concerns of those who would just as soon exploit a tragedy for profit as see it stopped.

In its way, Shadow Recruit is as cynical about the financial sector as Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, as pessimistic about the potential for civilians to survive without superheroes as Nolan's The Dark Knight. Early Jack Ryan novels, especially Patriot Games, were about the importance of stepping up when you found yourself in the wrong place at the right time. The new Jack Ryan doesn't so much have greatness thrust upon him as shoved down his—and our—throat.

Caveat Spectator

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit may be the sort of action movie that plays a little better for viewers with a strong aversion to sexual content or language than everyone else, simply because PG-13 thrillers are hard to come by. That means while Ryan and his fiancée cohabitate, they don't get too frisky, and expressions of frustration tend to be verbalized as derivatives of the name of Jesus rather than synonyms for fornication. There's a fair amount of shoot-and-fall violence along with some hand to hand combat. Cathy is threatened with a form of torture that is particularly gruesome, but it is described rather than depicted. Ryan kills a man with his bare hands, and we get to watch his victim die in close up. Afterwards, Ryan's hands shake, though, so the message is that killing isn't all that glamorous even when it's filmed artfully. Characters drink wine, and Viktor gets drugs injected early on, but it is implied later that they are medicinal rather than recreational.

Kenneth R. Morefield is an Associate Professor of English at Campbell University. He is the editor of Faith and Spirituality in Masters of World Cinema, Volumes I & II, and the founder of 1More Film Blog.