Review: "Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit"

There is a very good sequence in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, that begins with a fight in a hotel room, continues with a frantic phone call, and ends with two men on a park bench making sense of the events. At the end of that sequence, Jack Ryan (Chris Pine), a CIA analyst with serious back problems and very little field training, is handed a gun and upgraded to "operational." In that moment, Paramount Pictures effectively reboots the character as an action hero who shoots and punches his way to victory.

Now, I'm a complete sucker for secret agent movies, but in a post-9/11 world -- a fact unnecessarily emphasized in the very first scene -- where films like Zero Dark Thirty and Showtime's original series Homeland have proven that audiences still crave intelligent espionage stories, it seems silly to roll with the Bonds and the Bournes of the movie world, especially when you have a character who has always been distinguished by his intelligence. But, that's their hook. Like it or not.

Working undercover at a large firm on Wall Street, Jack analyzes financial data and tracks any unusual movement of money. Whisked away to Moscow to audit the books on billionaire businessman Viktor Cherevin (Kenneth Branagh, who also directed the movie), he uncovers a terrorist plot that would plunge the U.S. economy into another Great Depression. Working with Agent Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner), Jack will need to get close to Cherevin to stop it, but things get complicated when his girlfriend Cathy (Keira Knightley) shows up unannounced to surprise him. She's a wildcard, unaware of Jack's involvement with the agency, who will need to play her part in order to help him acquire crucial information to stop the attack.

I like Chris Pine; he has done strong work in the new Star Trek series, and the first half of this film uses him well. Branagh and Knightley have a few nice moments together also, and Costner is note-perfect in his role as the weathered mentor to Jack. Once the movie charges into its second half, however, the actors become mere cogs in the generic-action-movie machine, fading into the background of a final act that features a number of cliches and enough shaky camerawork to scramble up your breakfast omelet.

The movie falls short of its goal to compete -- in terms of quality -- with the Bonds and the Bournes of the world, but even worse is its failure to bring anything new to the table at all. The opportunity was there to stay true to the character and simply update the villain, plot, and themes to the current geopolitical landscape -- something that could have distinguished it from other contemporary action franchises. What we're left with, however, is a few mild thrills hidden within an overly familiar and disposable secret agent story. Given the talent involved, and the rich history of the character, in print and on screen, that's an absolute shame.