Starring: Chris Pine, Keira Knightly, Kevin Costner, Kenneth Branagh
Director: Kenneth Branagh
A young idealistic Marine is recruited by the CIA only to uncover a Russian plot to bring down the US economy.
Fresh off Actor/Director Kenneth Branagh’s helming of Thor he oversees the reboot of the franchise featuring the famed Tom Clancy character. Chris Pine steps in as Jack Ryan nicely filling the shoes formally worn by both Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford. This time we see how Ryan gets recruited by Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner who was ironically tapped to play the character before ceding the role to Baldwin to make Dances with Wolves.) into the agency. We follow Jack as he quickly moves from desk jockey to operational agent. Along the way there is a romantic angle filled by Keira Knightley as the fiancé with fidelity doubts not realizing the odd behavior is Ryan’s secret CIA work.
Ryan soon finds himself in Moscow involved in discovering a plot to disrupt the US economy and plunge it into a 2nd great depression headed up by Viktor Cherevin (Kenneth Branagh).
Don’t be fooled by the trailer. This is a straight forward political action thriller. The guise of this being a cat and mouse game of loyalty switching double agents is not even a part of the film. The only thing you don’t need to trust is the trailer telling you not to trust anyone. The first twenty minutes are all the origin of Ryan followed up by descending into a plot that involves the ever clichéd fight to stop the last second exploding bomb from destroying New York.
Shadow Recruit is a bit of a mashup between multiple films that have come before it the elaborate plans of mission impossible, the quick cut fighting of the Bourne series, the comedy aspect of Mr. and Mrs. Smith all thrown into a blender under the Clancy brand. Besides the paper thin plot Branagh chooses to utilize many tightly framed shots that accentuate the giant moles on his chin, the growth under pines right ear and Knightleys very English teeth. It’s a bizarre choice to say the least. It’s as if the lone original thought was to take the entire cast purposely ugly them up.
It’s not original in any way yet what it does it does with a workmanlike vigor that allows you to enjoy it while laying the foundation for more and hopefully a bit more ambitious films in the franchise of Clancy’s signature character.
If nothing else the film features multiple Land Rover defenders which due to lame safety laws have not been imported into the US since the 90′s. So it does have that going for it.
Grade-80