Does director Kenneth Branagh pull off the Jack Ryan reboot?While watching Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, one gets the distinct impression that the character of Viktor Cherevin desperately wants to be a James Bond villain. You see, he's got a maniacal plan to destroy the economy of the United States (sure, you could make the argument somebody has already beat him to the punch on that, but still, he has a plan), he has unlimited funds to carry out his evil schemes, and he has all the hubris required of a would-be world conqueror. Cherevin has everything he needs to make his dream of matching wits with James Bond come true… except for James Bond himself. No, in lieu of a dashing and debonair nemesis, the foe Cherevin has to face instead is Jack Ryan the Shadow Recruit as played by Chris Pine. Yeah, it's not quite the same, is it? So, in resigned disappointment, Cherevin, as well as the movie itself, just kind of coasts along in a lackluster manner, never really reaching their full potential.
Now, it all starts okay enough with a montage of pre-title sequences introducing this new version of Jack. You see Jack as he attends college majoring in finance, but his patriotism is spurred by the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, so he puts his career plans on hold, enlists in the military, and heads off to Afghanistan. After his helicopter is shot down, Jack (we are told, not shown) heroically drags two fellow soldiers to safety despite his own back being broken (the first of the movie's many moments in strained credulity). and is subsequently sent to John Hopkins to recover and regain the full use of his legs. It's there that he not only first meets his physical therapist/future fiancé, Cathy (Keira Knightley), but also comes under the watchful eye of Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner), a veteran government spook who sees potential in the young analyst/soldier.
It's while working for Harper as an undercover operative in a large Wall Street investment firm that Jack uncovers a looming terrorist threat. Putting his higher education skills to work, Jack has determined that someone plans to crash the U. S. economy through a coordinated physical/economic attack, one that can only be stopped if someone retrieves the necessary financial records from Russia. Being the only person employed by the United States government who understands international finance (I'm not sure if this strains credulity or is pretty much accurate), Jack is ordered to undertake the assignment himself, despite the fact that (1) Harper promised him he would never have to do field work or carry a gun, and (2) Cathy knows nothing about her fiancé's side job as a spy, so he must lie to her about his reasons for going.
Immediately upon arriving in Russia, Jack is set upon by an assassin and is forced to kill a man for the first time (apparently the only action he saw in Afghanistan must have been when his helicopter went down), an act which weighs heavily on his mind. After surviving the attempt on his life, Jack finally meets with his nemesis, Cherevin (Kenneth Branagh doing double duty as actor and director), only to find that the villain has destroyed most of the necessary evidence needed to head off the terrorist attack. The only way to get the information now is to break into Cherevin's office and retrieve the data directly from his computers, which means someone will have to distract Cheverin long enough to allow this to happen. Fortunately, a suspicious Cathy has followed Jack to Russia and, as luck would have it, she brought along some low cut formal wear, reads the same Russian novels as Cheverin, and has expert knowledge about the medical condition he suffers from. She makes for a fine distraction, and once she learns about Jack's secret life, decides to join in the mission, a choice Harper seems okay with despite her complete lack of training.
From that point on there are plenty of chases, gunfights, lots of procedural technobabble, and an obligatory explosion or two. You can pretty much check off the plot points as they happen. Don't get me wrong, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is not a bad movie. There's nothing exceedingly wrong with it. It's a perfectly serviceable spy thriller that hits all the necessary beats. It's just that the beats are ones we've all heard plenty of times before and this time around they're being played by a not particularly memorable cover band instead of the real thing.
It would be easy to lay the blame at the feet of Chris Pine. After all, he has the unenviable task of assuming the mantle of Jack Ryan, a role previously occupied by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, and Ben Affleck. Pine is an okay actor, but he's still in the Teen Choice/MTV Movie Award stage of his career, and doesn't quite carry the gravitas of his predecessors. Still, considering this is a reboot of the series, having someone like that is actually kind of appropriate for the role of the new spy on the block. If Pine shows up as Ryan again, I can't see too many people balking.
The problem seems to be the writing, or perhaps more precisely, the disparity between what's in the script and what actually seems to interest the director. As you could probably tell from the plot description above, the script is at times ridiculous, much more suited to the campier days of James Bond than to the analytic world associated with Jack Ryan. This is most likely due to the fact that while the character of Jack Ryan has appeared in 17 novels written by the late Tom Clancy, this installment of the movie series is based on none of them. Instead, Shadow Recruit is an all new story written by Hossein Amini, the man who recently penned Snow White and the Huntsman. Yep, he's not exactly a stickler for adhering to traditional characterizations.
For his part, Branagh seems more in tune with the old Jack Ryan than the new. He appears to put all his energy into the quiet scenes, things like the meet-cute between Jack and Cathy at the hospital, the long talk in a Russian park between Jack and Harper, and especially the tense dinner scene with Jack, Cathy, and Cheverin (yes, Branagh reserves the best moments for himself, but he's done that ever since Henry V). But when the action scenes roll around, Branagh seems to shift into auto-pilot, relying on excessive shaky cam rather than establishing any real sense of danger. Some of the fight editing is so bad in this movie that certain scenes are momentarily incomprehensible, with cuts so quick they qualify more as subliminal messaging than they do actual film-making.
Between this movie and the first Thor, it's obvious Branagh's having a tough time adapting to the expectations of modern day action movies. Oh, he can film fight scenes well when it's on his own terms, just go back and watch the battles in Henry V for proof. But trying to compete with Michael Bay style scenes of destruction just isn't his strong point. As a Christian I can sympathize with his dilemma a little bit. If you keep doing things the way you always did, you run the possible risk of not being relatable to newer generations. So, you end up trying to modernize things in order to stay relevant. Sadly, as so often happens, in the rush for relevance, you can often lose sight of the goodness of the thing. That can happen to anything, be it a mass or a movie. Sometimes it's wiser to leave things alone. Branagh should stick to his strengths and leave stuff like shaky cam to those directors who are experts at ruining their own movies with it.
My critic's complaints notwithstanding, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit isn't a terrible movie. You won't hate yourself if you spend the time watching it. But if you haven't seen any of the recently announced Academy Award nominees (or some of the films unjustly snubbed), nobody will blame you for going to see those instead.
In a world he didn't create, in a time he didn't choose, one man looks for signs of God in the world by… watching movies. When he's not reviewing new releases for Aleteia, David Ives spends his time exploring the intersection of low-budget/cult cinema and Catholicism at The B-Movie Catechism.
