JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT

Reviewed by Patrick Gibbs

GRADE: B+

Chris Pine, Kevin Costner, Keira Knightley and Kenneth Branagh

Screenplay by David Koepp

Directed by Kenneth Branagh

In 1990, The Hunt Red October created the spring blockbuster. Based on the bestselling novel by Tom Clancy, it was more than just a spy movie: it was a new genre that became known as the "techno thriller," incorporating state of the art, real world technology into a fictional action story. The selling point may have been Sean Connery as the Captain of the submarine Red October, but it was the secondary lead that would become the figurehead of this new genre: CIA analyst Jack Ryan, a new kind of spy. Jack Ryan was hardly James Bond: bookish and content to blend into the background whenever possible, Dr. Ryan was more comfortable with a briefcase and a computer than a gun (though he always held his own when the shooting started) and the only "Ryan Girls" were his wife and daughter.

The role was played by Alec Baldwin (after Harrison Ford turned it down because he felt that the Russian sub commander was the true lead, and much to the producers frustration, Kevin Costner turned it down a total of four times because he was too busy with "some movie about Indians."). But when it came time to make a follow up with Ryan taking center stage, Baldwin was unavailable because of an off Broadway play, and Ford had a change of heart (plus a sizable paycheck and added creative control), and he took over the role for two films, Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. But creative differences between Ford and Clancy lead to yet another change, and in 2002 flavor of the month superstar Ben Affleck stepped into the role for The Sum Of All Fears, the movie that begat the now popular "franchise reboot." Despite revisionist history that tells us  Affleck bombed out in the role, The Sum Of All Fears was actually a big hit at the box office, in no small part because it's story of a major terrorist attack on American soil, in the form of a nuclear bomb being set off at the Super Bowl, ended up being much more topical then anyone could have foreseen. In the end, despite the film's success, issues of how to adapt Clancy's increasingly unwieldy novels where Ryan became President of the United States to fit Affleck's younger version of the character, combined with the post 9/11 climate and the sudden downward spiral of Affleck's career after a series of high profile flops, lead the Jack Ryan franchise to go cold for more than 10 years.

JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT is the reboot of the reboot, based not on any one novel but instead on "characters created by" Tom Clancy (who passed away before the film's release.) Like the Affleck film, this one starts afresh, giving us a new origin story for the young again title character (played this time by STAR TREK's Chris Pine.). In this version, the 9/11 tragedy leads Jack to join the US Marine Corps, and he suffers a debilitating injury when is chopper is shot down in Afghanistan ( in Clancy's novels Ryan was an ex-marine who had survived a helicopter crash, and this was referenced in the film of RED OCTOBER.). Jack ends up in a military hospital, where he finds himself learning to walk again and falling for a beautiful young med student named  Cathy (Keira Knightley), in her most charismatic and charming performance since SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD.) Jack also attracts the attention of Commander William Harper (Kevin Costner, who finally finished that movie about Indians.) The older man approaches Jack with an offer/request: to continue serving his country by joining the CIA. Jack will finish his education and then go to Wall Street, where he will work covertly for the agency to uncover sources funding terrorist organizations across the globe. Jack accepts, and the story picks up a couple of years later with Jack working for a big wall street investment firm, and in a serious relationship with Cathy, who is unaware of his double life (he can only tell her if they are legally married.).

Jack discovers some suspicious activity in Russia involving a man named Cherevin (Kenneth Branagh, who also directs.). Soon our hero is on his way to Moscow to audit Cherevin, and his training as a marine (not to mention having apparently seen the Bourne trilogy and Casino Royale) comes in handy when he is attacked in his hotel room by a would be assassin.

From here, the plot becomes a tiny bit muddled, though screenwriter David Koepp does his best to make the economic and technical jargon accessible ("Explain it to me like I'm an idiot" Harper tells Jack.).  Suffice to say, Cherevin is up to something, and Jack Ryan must fight the clock to stop a terrorist plot to destroy the U.S. economy.

The film is fast paced and exciting, if less epic and spectacular than the standard set by the franchise in it's heyday. Ultimately the movie rides on the charm and chemistry of it's cast, which would have been enough to carry a far weaker film. Pine and Costner make a great hero and mentor duo, and Knightley generates  sparks with both Pine and Branagh: in fact, this may be the first time the character of Cathy really got her due in a film. Branagh does his best with an underwritten stock character, and though he certainly isn't up there with Clancy's best villains, he's a step up from the silly, cartoon Neo Nazi Alan Bates portrayed in The Sum Of All Fears.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit  is not genuinely great, nor is it anything we haven't seen before,  but it's a very entertaining and even intelligent popcorn flick, and a worthy entry in a series that has featured four different leading men and spanned nearly two and a half decades. Whether the next Jack Ryan adventure stars Chris Pine, or the franchise gets yet another reboot, my fondness for the character and enthusiasm for his ongoing adventures remains solidly intact.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is rated PG-13 for violence, profanity, and some mild sexuality.

Patrick's Picks: The Ten Worst Films of 2013

by Patrick Gibbs

1. MOVIE 43
In the 1970's, a sketch comedy based film called The Kentucky Fried Movie gave us an idea of what Saturday Night Live would be like if it was not live, was on the big screen, and did not have to bow to network censors.  The result was a mixed bag, but it had an edge to it and provided some genuinely big laughs. Peter Farrelly, one half of the Dumb and Dumber team, decided to try a similar approach, but with the the aid of an all star cast: Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslett, Naomi Watts, Halle Berry, Greg Kinear, Uma Thurman, Gerard Butler, Chloe Grace Mortetz, Justin Long, Dennis Quaid and more all make appearances in this collision of painfully unfunny and graphically disgusting vignettes, all based around bodily functions, and it's hard to decide whether it is to their credit or shame that most of them really give their performances 100%: in particular, watching my favorite actress, Watts, put everything she's got into a jaw-droppingly awful sequences about a couple who is Home Schooling their teenage son and is obsessed with making sure he doesn't miss out on any of the formative, scarring social moments like getting hazed and bullied, or botching his first make out session (with his mother filling in for the girl) is a grueling experience. And when we see outtakes of Hugh Jackman breaking up between takes of his big scene as the "most eligible bachelor" on a blind date with Winslett, who discovers to her horror that when he takes off his scarf in the restaurant he has a pair of testicles growing out of his neck, the suspicion that he should never be allowed to choose his own material is definitively proven to be correct.  And those are just the first two sketches. It gets worse. I may need therapy to forget this movie.

2. PAIN AND GAIN                                 
After helming three Transformers movies, Hollywood's loudest filmmaker, Michael Bay decided he wanted to make a smaller, character driven dark comedy set in the real world. Having never actually visited earth, Bay can only guess at what goes on there, and the result is this crass and juvenile film based on the "true story" of musclebound oaf Daniel Lugo (a massively bulked up Mark Wahlberg) who attends a motivational seminar about how to be successful and therefore decides to find the only  two guys in Miami (Anthony Mackie and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) even stupider than he is to help him rob and kidnap the richest man at the gym. All of the signature Bay shots are there (the low angle 360, the slow motion walking in step "we bad" shot, the women made of silicone and left under a heat lamp until their skin is a golden brown bending over as beads of sweat rolls down them, etc), but only one car explodes in the whole movie, so this really is an artistic stretch.  Wahlberg comes through the movie okay, neither impressing us or embarrassing himself, but Dwayne Johnson (who appeared in every third movie released in the first 6 months of the year) gives a career worst performance, if such a thing is even possible, and sadly, the great Tony Shaloub fairs even worse as the shrill, obnoxious man these guys are targeting. and unlike most of the films on this list, which at least show enough mercy to be 100 minutes or less, Pain and Gain clocks in at 2 hours and 9 minutes without a single redeeming quality. 

3. SPRING BREAKERS
Let it never be said that film is not an equal opportunity medium: women can go to Florida and act stupid, show a lot of skin and commit robbery just as well as guys can, thank you very much.  Spring Breakers follows the story of Faith, Brittany, Candy and Cotty, four college BFF's who are determined to go to Ft. Lauderdale for spring break (wooooo!), or they will like totally die. No money? No problem? Simply put on ski masks and hoodies (but mind you, not pants, because that would just be too much), and rob the local chicken shack, armed only with squirt guns and F bombs, and then head off to the beach  for some fun in the sun!

We are treated to endless montages of bouncing breasts, bodacious bods, bountiful booze and bubbling bongs (it's a B movie) while former Wizards of Waverly Place star Selena Gomez explains in a voice over that "it's all so beautiful Grandma, I really want to bring you with me next time."  These girls bond and have a great time together, and totally never want this roller coaster ride to end, until a party that gets out of control lands them in bikini jail. They are bailed out by a sleazy wannabe gangsta rapper called Alien (James Franco), who might have a hidden agenda, though for the life of them these girls can't see what would motivate an illiterate inbred horndog jackass to take such an interest in lil' ol' them. Only Faith (Gomez) has the sense to realize that something is wrong, and takes the first bus out of there so she can get to her next bad movie on time, while the other girls are pulled into a world of guns and bling and "shorts in like, every color."

Franco plunges into his role like he's at an "all the scenery you can chew" buffet, and in case all y'all ever start to forget that this is spring break, he is there to helpfully remind y'all by shouting out "spring break, bitches!" approximately 84 times in the course of a 92 minute film. Eventually Alien gets shot dead by Big Arch, an even tougher rival gangsta who has the good sense to be black, and two of the girls avenge his death.

Make no mistake, this is not just a cheesecake picture: no, this is a dark, gritty social commentary that really puts the "ass" in the word aspirations.  Spring Breakers (Woooo!) goes to a lot of effort to feel raw and artsy, and you have to understand that this is a serious exploration of the dangers that await naive young girls when they fall in with the wrong crowd of filmmakers.

4. KILLING SEASON                                

John Travolta and Robert De Niro star in this insipid revenge yarn. Benjamin Ford (De Niro) is a retired veteran who lives alone in a cabin in the mountains because the atrocities he saw in the Bosnian war "ruined him." When Emil Kovac (Travolta), a strange survivalist type with what is apparently supposed to be a Serbian accent (you can tyell becyause of the yextra Y's he edds to most of hees wyords) shows up to act generally weird and to give us an idea of what it would look like if  Elvis Presley grew an Abraham Lincoln beard and dressed up as a longshoreman for Halloween, naturally Ben finds nothing suspicious about this fellow and invites him to dinner. The next morning they decide to go bow hunting together. But shockingly, Kovac (the only Serbian last name Hollywood writers are legally allowed to use) is more interested in shooting at Ben than at deer. Our hero is so shaken by this turn of events that he suddenly develops a southern accent in order to cope with the situation. Of course, it turns out that these two have a history, going back to the Bosnian conflict. What follows is a sadistic game of cyat and mouse as Kovac and Ben shoot arrows through each other, and Ben (I am not making this up) makes up a pitcher of freshly squeezed lemonade with lots of salt and pours it over Kovac's face after having shot an arrow through his cheeks. Who wouldn't want to watch that?

Finally, the two men decide that they have had enough, Ben tells Kovac a dirty joke, and the two men part in peace, moving on with their lives, both having grown a little wiser from the experience, promising to write and perhaps get together once a year to brutally torture each other. But one dangerous man is left unaccounted for and presumably not done inflicting pain on others: director Mark Steven Johnson (Daredevil and Ghost Rider), who reaches an all time low with this atrocity.

5.  PARKER
Set in Palm Beach, Florida ( this was not a good movie year for the Orange Juice capitol), Parker tells the story of a professional thief  (Jason Statham), who is robbing a county fair dressed as a Priest when his is double-crossed by his crew, who leave him shot and bloodied on the side of the road, where he is found by pig farmers. He sets out for revenge, tracking down and killing them all, but not before enlisting the aid of a realtor played by Jennifer Lopez (so, just to review: if you ever get screwed over when committing a robbery, left for dead and rescued by pig farmers, you're going to need a good realtor if you want to do anything about it.) The highlight of the movie is Statham going undercover in a white ten gallon hat and effecting a Texas accent that is so laughably bad that Gerard Butler owes him a fruit basket (see below.).

6.  AFTER EARTH                                                      
A military father and his teenage son crash land on Earth one thousand years after cataclysmic events forced humanity to abandon Earth for a new home planet. The son must save his dying father and himself by trekking alone across hostile terrain pursued by evolved predators and an alien beast to recover a rescue-beacon. Amazingly, even after the impressive string of classics that were Lady In The Water, The Happening and The Last Airbender, the studio chose not to include the name of director and co-writer M. Night Shyamalan as one of the major selling points of this sci fi snooze fest, choosing instead to focus on the visual effects and the long awaited big screen teaming of Karate Kid star Jaden Smith and his father Will, who also served as a producer and wrote the story upon which the screenplay was based, which means Shyalaman can legitimately deflect some of the blame this time around, though whoever made the decision to make the entire cast effect an indefinable accent that sounds like John Houseman doing an impression of Mr. T should definitely be the first one under the bus. 

7.  OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN
And on the subject of bad accents, we had to arrive at Gerard Butler eventually. Gerry has spent his career mastering the "can't sing that note? Growl. Can't quite hide the Scrooge McDuck brogue? Growl. Can't act? Take your shirt off" school of acting. In all seriousness, Butler is not without talent, but he has made such a career out of being miscast that it is often hard to remember that. Here he is cast as Sylvestor Stallone playing Harrison Ford playing Bruce Willis in this homage to Air Force One ripping off Die Hard.  When North Koreans stage an all out frontal assault on the White House, two things happen: first, we get the answer to the question "What if 9/11 had been produced by Jerry Bruckheimer?" and a disgraced former secret service agent must sneak in through the front door and save everyone, using a manual of techniques written by John Rambo, John McClane, Jack Bauer and Dick Cheney. Violence is passed of as action and sadism is passed off as entertainment in this poorly executed, by the numbers ode to the R-Rated shoot 'em ups of the '90's.

                                            

8. PHANTOM
First off, let's get one thing straight: this is not merely a remake of The Hunt for Red October. It's also a remake of Crimson Tide.  A "true story" loosely based on the real life K-129 crisis of 1968 (in the same way that Bend It Like Beckham was loosely based on the  Apollo moon landings), Phantom is the story of a relic Russian nuclear submarine during the height of the Cold War that is to be decommissioned after one final voyage, when a KGB agent played by David Duchovy takes control of the boat away from its Captain (Ed Harris) and tries to start a war between the U.S. and China by firing a missile at the American fleet with a MADE IN CHINA sticker attached to it. Solid performances from a solid cast can't make up for a tepid script and sluggish pacing, and in the end Phantom winds up a sunken wreck.

9.GETAWAY
I am really not trying to pick on Selena Gomez. I  found her genuinely charming in Ramona and Beezus, and she is easily one of the most endearing live action Disney Channel stars (which admittedly is comparable to being one of the most endearing crotch lice infestations, but still . . .).  In Getaway, she continues to step away from her squeaky clean image and prove that she is actually a very serious and grown up actress. For example, she says the "s word" and even the 'a-hole" word like, a bunch of times.

Getaway is the story of washed out race car driver Brent Magna (Ethan Hawke), who couldn't live with the burden of having such a silly name and decided he would never race again. Or would he?  One night Brent's wife is kidnapped by a mysterious villain (played by Jon Voight) who forces him to steal a sports car and re-enact moments from the first season of 24 while doing a commercial for GoPro cameras. 


   
10.  GANGSTER SQUAD                                      
If The Untouchables went to Florida for spring break (woo!) and had a drunken indiscretion with both LA Confidential and Dick Tracy, the love child that resulted would be Gangster Squad.  Sean Penn tries to be De Niro, Emma Stone tries to be Betty Boop, and Josh Brolin tries to be an Oak tree (and succeeds.).  Only Ryan Gosling, who plays like a young Robert Redford, comes out of this intact, in no small part to due to the fact that he seems to be aware that the movie is lousy and just relies on his natural charm.


And so, as January begins and the first of two new Hercules movies  (the one that doesn't star Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) is set for next week, we can only grit our teeth, hope that Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit defies the odds, and wait for bigger and better things in the coming months, and try very hard not to think of Movie 43 while watching X-Men: Days of Future Past, and avoid the Michael Bay and Mark Wahlberg re-teaming this summer in Transformers 4: Blowing Up A Dead Horse.