http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9KAnx4EvaE
In the fog of January, a month during which the scraps of Hollywood are being released to the public in the wake of the end-of-the-year awards season rush, the brightest glimpses of hope usually come in unexpected forms. Occasionally, there’s a film that, though bland and unappealing in the trailers, has a tinge of fresh elements to put it in the league of, at the very least, good entertainment.
That film for 2014 appears to be “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit,” the fifth entry in the Jack Ryan film series. Chris Pine is the fourth actor to take Ryan’s name, a character made famous through novels by the late author Tom Clancy, in a reboot of the series that re-establishes his roots.
Unlike the other films in the series, however, “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” is not based on a particular Clancy novel, but rather is based on an original script penned by Adam Cozad and “Jurassic Park” writer David Koepp. It abandons most of the messy Cold War and CIA backstories that have extended over the series, choosing instead to throw it all together in a more modern setting with varied amounts of success.
Ryan enters as a college student inspired by the events of Sept. 11, 2001. He works toward his goal of becoming a Marine, only to fall victim to a near-fatal attack that leaves his body heavily damaged. While recovering through therapy sessions, Ryan meets William Harper (Kevin Costner), a CIA agent who wants to put Ryan undercover on Wall Street as a secret analyst for the United States, looking over accounts and monetary transactions from other countries.
Fast forward to the present day: Ryan has established himself as a master in economics, still reporting to the CIA and in a relationship with the woman he has been with for nearly a decade, Cathy Muller (Keira Knightley). He discovers a discrepancy in bank files relating to Russian businessman Viktor Cherevin (Kenneth Branagh) and, fearing the worst with his extremely deductive mind, takes a trip to Moscow to confront the potential terrorist in person.
As director and actor, Branagh takes both roles with great pizzazz. Donning a Russian accent thicker than any Shakespearean inflection Branagh has used in his life, he plays the stereotypical action villain, obsessed with power, high security and talking about his plans too much. He’s a charismatic personality that complements Pine well, who brings the same likeable qualities to his character that he does to the “Star Trek” series.
It’s purely fun aspects like these that help “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” surface as a movie that will be approved by theatergoers looking for some fluidly tense action sequences to enjoy. Otherwise, “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” has a hard time looking good on paper. Its plot is filled with the most overdone elements of secret agent storylines, coming up with few to no surprises to back up its largely proportioned disaster premise.
Somewhere around the point when Ryan bursts out of his shell from behind the desk of a stock market firm and becomes as deductive as Sherlock Holmes is where the movie stops making much sense. Ryan goes through several feats of extreme prowess to have a step above the enemy, only to find an easy way out when the criminals catch him in the act. The leaps of logic that much of the film’s events take are hopelessly destructive to its pacing, even when amid playful ideas.
Branagh has definitely created better products, Pine and Knightley have definitely starred in better works and the Jack Ryan series has definitely had moments of better structure that don’t flow into a loud mess at a moment’s notice. But “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” has one very big plus above the competition in theaters right now: It’s exciting, taking some of the best elements of “24” and the “Bourne” series to heart, resulting in a fairly recommendable, if not surprisingly interesting, project.