Upon seeing that a new “Jack Ryan” movie was going to be released, I was initially excited. When I was in high school and college, I read several of Tom Clancy’s books, including those featuring the character John “Jack” Ryan. The plots always seemed to have that tinge of reality to them, that what I was reading could possibly occur.
Sure enough, on September 11, 2001, something right out of his books came to life. The 1994 book Debt of Honor ended with a terrorist flying a passenger airliner into the U.S. Capitol building. I can still remember that on 9/11, I thought back to that book and how eerie it was that what I had read only a few years earlier had become a reality.
I had watched the previous “Jack Ryan” movies (The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger) prior to reading any of the books. I found the installments to be enjoyable, even if they were not always memorable. In both the films and books, Ryan was portrayed as more “brains” than “brawn” even though he had been a Marine before being injured. But when situations arose when force was absolutely needed, he used it.
By comparison, John Clark from Clancy’s Rainbow Six and various other novels, was often the one called upon to take care of the “wet work” that needed to be done after Ryan had uncovered the various nefarious plots.
The trailer for Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit seemed intriguing, with Ryan in Russia dealing with a major threat to the United States (per the norm of Clancy’s character) and apparently confronted with possible untrustworthy elements in Kevin Costner’s and Keira Knightley’s characters. It seemed that plot twists could abound in the film based off of this two-minute promo reel.
Then I saw the sentence, “Based on characters created by Tom Clancy.” Why, I thought, when so much material already existed, would filmmakers need to create their own story?
After all, Clancy wrote numerous “Jack Ryan” books, many of which could be slightly altered to reflect modern day geo-political realities. The Cold War setting wouldn’t have to be changed that much. Russia and China are still threats to the United States, the Middle East is a powder keg and southern Asia is close behind it. Rogue elements in any of these areas could significantly alter and endanger the way of life for many Americans even today. The “Jack Ryan” material is incredibly deep. With the right combination of filmmakers and actors,it could be a steady series for any studio.
Of the two main characters from Clancy’s lengthy novels, CIA operative John Clark seemed much more appropriate to have a series spinoff not directly based on the Clancy books. Clark’s character has been in two of the “Jack Ryan” movies and has often been discussed for other projects. Rainbow Six is essentially a book just about him, giving filmmakers ample room to create a new story. Perhaps Clark’s narrative could even be tied in with the existing storylines that Clancy had developed in his “Jack Ryan” books.
Still, I decided to see Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (in part, to write this review). The film is quite a departure from the trailer. The twists and turns that the trailer alludes to are essentially non-existent. Every character is who they are, with few surprises along the way. The good guys are good and the bad guys are bad — pretty much the opposite of what the trailer leads you to believe.
Don’t get me wrong — it was a decent movie, one I certainly would have rented, just based off the genre, actors and apparent plot. This is where the Clancy storylines would have been helpful, though. The film is obviously meant as the beginning of a series. Once again, I go back to thinking that the vast majority of content was already prepared by the author, if Hollywood had chosen to go in that direction. All that was needed was some updating to the storyline. A perfect example is the film showing Ryan joining the Marine Corps post-9/11 and being injured in Afghanistan a few years later.
Given that this was essentially an “origins” story, the casting of Chris Pine seemed appropriate. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is similar to the 2002 Ben Affleck vehicle The Sum of All Fears in this regard. While many may think of Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan (Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger), those stories involved Ryan as an older man, both a husband and father.
Without ruining the film for those who have yet to see it, had the movie been titled Jack Smith: Shadow Recruit, it probably would have been better. The simple fact that it was a “Jack Ryan” movie gave away some of the most obvious plot points. Director Kenneth Branagh (who also stars as the Russian bad guy) and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura seem to have been caught between two approaches in the film.
There is the way that Clancy would have told the story — more analytical, with Ryan using his intelligence first and his physicality second. (Think Alec Baldwin in The Hunt for Red October.) Then there is the story the filmmakers could have told, had there been no ties to Clancy — basically a “Bourne” type of movie. Both outcomes likely would have been better than what resulted, where we see only see glimpses of Ryan’s incredible intelligence and action sequences that seem incomplete.
The box office has not been kind to Shadow Recruit in its two weekends of release, making a estimated combined $26 million. (Compare that to Ride Along, which made $41 million on its opening weekend.) The reviews have been middling, drawing a 60 percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. If the series is going to continue, perhaps the upcoming plots can tie in a bit more closely to the books that have been so successful, rather than have the filmmakers try to reinvent the wheel.
Follow Sam Genson on Twitter @Tigercub33
