Movie Review: "Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit" (Kenneth Branagh, 2014)

OH, TO BE YOUNG AND HEAVILY ARMED:

“JACK RYAN” IS PREQUEL PROPAGANDA by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

 

 

Left: Chris Pine as Jack Ryan

 

 

Early in “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit,” the very evil banker Viktor Charevin (Kenneth Branagh) makes a solemn declaration: “Mother Russia will be avenged.  America will bleed!”  It’s a hopeless promise, of course, because like all villains, Charevin is doomed to be outwitted by a resourceful and handsome hero.  But before you fault the fellow’s prophetic prowess, consider that thanks to “Jack Ryan”’s poor box office performance, the American movie business is at least bleeding money. 

I can’t say I’m disappointed, especially since the film has enough of cringe-inducing moments (a “cute” marriage proposal comes to mind) to make you wish you’d decided to see “Inside Llewyn Davis” a second time instead.  And yet despite that, “Jack Ryan” is not without its pleasures.  True, the movie is rather stupid, but it’s hardly unentertaining—something which distressingly few American blockbusters can boast of.

            Still, that’s no thanks to the film’s first act.  Following the example of Christopher Nolan’s “Batman Begins,” “Jack Ryan” purports to develop an emotional back story for its titular CIA analyst, beginning with young Jack (Chris Pine) getting wounded in Afghanistan and being offered a chance to put his intellect to patriotic use as a secret agent.  Then, before long, he’s undercover in New York, ferreting out terrorist financiers and attempting to conceal his activities from his girlfriend Cathy (Keira Knightley).    

I’ll grant you—as heroic histories go, this is fairly workable, if not nearly as memorable as Bruce Wayne’s boyhood tumble into the Batcave.  Yet there’s something disturbingly jingoistic about this new version of Ryan.  No longer is he just a good man doing his job (as he was in John McTiernan’s marvelous 1990 thriller “The Hunt for Red October”)—instead, he’s become a poster child for enlistment and unquestioning patriotism.  Oh sure, Jack is horrified the first time he’s forced to kill a man on the job, but any regret is hurriedly washed away by the triumphant Patrick Doyle music that’s played when a CIA handler presses a gun into our hero’s hand. 

            In such moments, “Jack Ryan” threatens to veer out of the realm of pleasing fantasy and into the very real minefield of propaganda.  And yet Mr. Branagh (who also directed the film) wisely drops that subtext and focuses instead on a thrillingly intricate series of events in Moscow, where Ryan attempts to derail Charevin’s dastardly scheme (which involves crippling the American economy via terrorism).  Thus, we get the expected fistfights and car chases, but also a giddily bizarre sequence in which Jack pretends to drunk, hoping to trick Charevin into underestimating him—a twist that makes the film genuinely suspenseful and gives Mr. Pine a chance to display the biting vigor he’s brought to the “Star Trek” movies.

             But should you stay in your seat after that?  Probably not.  Because even though the final act of “Jack Ryan” has enough adrenaline to keep your eyes glued to the screen (especially when Jack struggles to steer a bomb-toting van into the East River), the film simply isn’t arresting enough to make it more worthwhile than the numerous action movies that are available on DVD. 

And more to the point, the hard truth is that as competently assembled as “Jack Ryan” is (Mr. Branagh, who also directed “Thor,” knows from blockbusters), it fails to answer a key question: why does Jack Ryan fight?  To save America?  To save his loved ones?  Whatever the reason, it never registers strongly enough for us to truly want him to succeed.