K-SCORE: 54
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Based on: characters by Tom Clancy
Writers: Adam Cozad, David Koepp
Starring: Chris Pine, Kevin Costner, Kenneth Branagh, Keira Knightley
Spoiler Level: Major
“Hollywood has only progressed to the point where they know they need to have female characters in their films and not yet to the point where they understand that the female characters in the films need to have something to do”
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit! Dun dun dun!! Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is a taut PG-13 spy thriller as cheesy as its title makes it sound. The plot is riddled with Russian machine gun bullet holes and then choked with fiberwire woven of cliches. British actors fake American and Russian accents on their journey to uncover a terrorist plot with straight-up no twists. Insidious Russians have a grudge and somehow the ability to crash the US economy forever like it’s a glass sculpture on an eroding cliff. All it takes to defeat them: surviving car chases, winning fist-fights with black dudes, finding files labeled ‘Top Secret’, getting handsy with Asian chicks, hacking, working just the right percentage tragedy and patriotism into your backstory, turning your hot girlfriend into a spy/seductress, planting tracking beacons, finding other tracking beacons that have been planted on you, driving a van of explosives into water rendering it totally harmless, and a young attractive white guy being led by an older attractive white guy. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit!
I understand that Hollywood has only progressed to the point where they know they need to have female characters in their films and not yet to the point where they understand that the female characters in the films need to have something to do, but come on! There’s no way Knightley should have been involved in this story. If anyone can find out the Russian phrase that means “tactical liability” that’d be really great.