It’s baby Jack Ryan (Chris Pine)! Well, geez, who don’t we have an origin story for these days? Lessee, we know Darth Vader and Indiana Jones and Professor Xavier and every superhero. We know Forrest Gump; we know Joe Dirt; We know Seabiscuit; We even know what prepubscent Dr. Evil and Megamind and all the muppets were like. You know whose childhood is a mystery? John McClane. No idea how that guy got to be who he is.
Speaking of McClane, the worst Die Hard came out about this time last year and Jack Ryan :Shadow Recruit just humiliated it. I won’t call Shadow Recruit a great film (let’s not be silly); but this Russian espionage backstory of America’s favorite boy scout is exactly what Die Hard 5: Mission to Moscow should have been. Influenced by 9/11, college-Jack immediately signs up, then gets blown up. Afghanistan just ain’t good news, folks. Not in theory, not in practice, not in our art. Unless movies have lied to me, it’s far easier for an American to come out of Nazi Germany unscathed than Afghanistan. Don’t mess with the goats; you’ll get the gruff. Anyway, while learning how to walk again, Jack acquires two people: his future wife, Cathy (Keira Knightley, who goes American! in this one) and his future handler, CIA ghost “Tom” “Harper” (“Kevin” “Costner”).
Watching Keira go whole hog with the American accent thing was so strange to comprehend that for an hour I thought she’d been dubbed.
Tom recruits Jack for the CIA by sending him through grad school and on to Wall Street afterwards. Jack surreptitiously checks out secret Russian accounts until he knows something 
is going on — the Russians are going to flood the market and devalue the dollar, which, in connection with a terrorist attack, will create a second Great Depression.
The good news is you can’t actually do this in real life. One Russian guy alone –even a powerful one with a lot of secret accounts– can’t actually blow up the U.S. economy without the compliance of many powerful Western capitalists. So, this plot is a real world fail. The bad news is when it comes to rich Americans engaging in myopic economic suicide, compliance isn’t as difficult as one would hope: deregulation? Why that sounds like fantastic idea! And you say I’ll make a lot of money to boot? “Temporarily?” What does that mean? Forget it, I’m in.
Before Jack knows it, he’s broken his kill cherry in Moscow (I’m sorry, why do the Russians need to kill a glorified accountant?) and the future Missus catches him in Moscow being all stealthy so, next thing you know, she has to play along with the scheme to undermine Viktor Cherevin (Kenneth Branagh). Kenn Hamlet here directs himself as the willain (unfortunately, no nuclear wessels here). That’s a pretty good coup — how many others have directed themselves as the antagonist? I’d love to know, because I think that’s a much sounder career move. And isn’t it more fun to play the bad guy than the good guy?
You take every January release with a grain of salt. Shadow Recruit is fun, but far from perfect. Sure, I’d love to see, just once, a movie where the flash drive behaves, say, like any flash drive I’ve ever owned …freezes up, corrupts itself, computer fails to recognize it … you know, any of the above. And sure, the 80s called: they want their plot back. At the end of the day, however, this kind of espionage is exactly what John McClane should have been doing last year. Well, maybe with a little less subtlety – that’s not his thing.
Nationalist Jack’s colors shown
Deep into the fire he’s thown
Stopped all that brewin’
To bring about ruin
Not bad for a noob all alone
Rated PG-13, 105 Minutes
D: Kenneth Branagh
W: Adam Cozad and David Koepp
Genre: Moose und sqvirrel, oh wait, we’re serious about this Russian bad-guy stuff? Oh.
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: People who miss the Cold War
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Russians
