(USA/Russia, 105 min.)
Dir. Kenneth Branagh, Writ. Adam Cozad, David Koepp
Starring: Chris Pine, Keira Knightley, Kevin Costner, Kenneth
Branagh
Russia probably has enough political nightmares to deal with
in the days leading up to the Olympic Games in Sochi. Anti-gay laws, a
Draconian President, and Pussy Riot are enough causes for controversy, but the
unfortunate timing of the release of Jack
Ryan: Shadow Recruit—it was pushed back when Paramount was stuck playing
post-production ping pong with The Wolf ofWall Street—couldn’t be more awkward. Bruce Willis might as well yell,
“Yippee-Ki-Yay, Mother Russia!” This generic rehash of the popular character Jack
Ryan, now played by Chris Pine (aka Captain Kirk), is a relic of Cold War-era
conflict cut-and-paste into a world of post-9/11 paranoia. Everything feels old
and cold in this lumbering, xenophobic rehash. Jack Ryan is a shoddy reboot.
There’s really no need to bring back the hero who has already endured one jolt with the defibrillator. Recall 2002’s decent thriller The Sum of All Fears (part of which was shot in Ottawa’s Diefenbunker) that starred Ben Affleck as Mr. Ryan. Affleck then moved on to Gigli and Ryan took a bullet. They should have kept him dead.
There’s actually a lot of potential, though, for a franchise
that began with great old-school thrillers like The Hunt for Red October, Clear
and Present Danger, and Patriot Games.
Jack Ryan is like an everyman’s James Bond, so it’s a shame the studios
couldn’t pull another Skyfall from
out their sleeves. Jack Ryan: Shadow
Recruit might be Hollywood at its derivative worst.
This film might be the most uninspired attempt to reignite a
dead franchise since Alex Cross. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit doesn’t reek
of rot nearly as badly as the Tyler Perry turkey did, but it certainly does
stink of wasted potential. There is enormous talent both behind the camera and
in front of it, yet Jack Ryan: Shadow
Recruit sees many A-level stars coasting by in Paycheck Mode.
Keira Knightley does the best that one can in the role of
the pain in the ass girlfriend who nearly blows the mission with her suspicions
of infidelity, but Jack Ryan hardly
offers the material she is capable of doing, especially in collaboration with
the great Kenneth Branagh as her co-star and director. Branagh has a bit of fun
snarling for the camera as the cartoonish vodka-swilling villain with plans to
annihilate America; as a director, though, his voice seems wholly absent from
the film. Knightley and Branagh are capable of better. A Tom Clancy adaptation,
and a half-assed one at that, doesn’t seem like ideal work for the muse of Joe
Wright period pics or for the modern-day Olivier.
Pine, on the other hand, isn’t quite as serviceable in the
lead role. The actor has been a decent choice to lead the reboot of the Star Trek franchise, for his
schoolboy-ish charm works perfectly in a role like Captain Kirk, which never
really implores itself to be taken seriously as the character assumes William
Shatner’s shoes and ventures into the final frontier. Pine, though, is
hopelessly lost in the role of Jack Ryan. Frankly, he’s boring.
Jack Ryan: Shadow
Recruit almost plays like an American recruitment video for the Marines and
the CIA. It doesn’t help the propaganda machine, either, that Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit portrays a naïvely
homogenous America fighting the foreign enemy. There are less visible
minorities among the cast of Jack Ryan
than one can count on one hand, and the whitewashing of the cast isn’t helped
by the fact that the only speaking roles for people of colour are the gun-toting
black man who dies first and the Asian cyber whiz.
Pine gives the audience a bland, pasty young man with high
ambitions who walks away from his higher education and goes off to war after
witnessing the attacks of 9/11. Jack is injured in battle, but he shows courage
and valour. He then works to overcome the odds as Keira Knightley prompts him
to recover his ability to walk, thus saving him from (gasp) a wheelchair and a
life devoid of service.
This Jack Ryan might be the most one-dimensional hero ever to
bring a franchise back from the dead. There’s very little character to Jack Ryan
as he’s scripted and Pine brings little to the role to make Jack Ryan a man
with enough inner conflict to fuel subsequent films. His hands shake when he
kills his first man and he protests to his boss (Kevin Costner) that he only
signed up to be an analyst, but Pine plays Ryan like a programmed drone as Jack
transforms from meek geek to gung-ho action hero with a mere jolt. He even
knows how to do all these fancy tricks on a motorcycle as if it’s an innate
gift.
Jack Ryan develops by the numbers as shows that any average
American can save the world by weeding out the nasty Russians invading American
soil. All he needs to do is negotiate a bunch of overused plot devices, jump on
a bike, and remove the bomb at the last second. The film is so familiar it almost
develops as a cliché of a cliché as Hollywood reprocesses garbage from recycled
material. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
might be one of the most generic, artless, and hilariously macho action movies
in some time. It’s the Nickelback of Hollywood reboots.
Rating: ★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is now playing in wide release.
