Jack Ryan: Shadow Recuit

Well folks, they have done it again. Paramount Pictures deemed that what we needed around here was a new series of Jack Ryan movies, and here it is, and it is actually pretty good.  Director Kenneth Branagh has been quoted as saying that it, "was the kind of film that I like to go and see."  We'll see if the market bears him out.

I like this sort of film as well.  A spy picture is perfect for films with their linear story lines, actors (and sometimes actresses) moving across the frame with a resolute step and clear intentions, crisp storytelling direction, along with advanced demonstrations of Griffith's cross-cutting technique.  Ryan is a marvelous example of how the Hollywood system can put together something so sharp and confident, even though the film had been in development hell for years.

Kenneth Branagh certainly knows how to deadpan.

Branagh certainly knows a lot about theatre and the movies.  This is the sort of movie where a sequence will open with a shot looking across Red Square in Moscow, and there will be a title in the corner that says "Moscow" and they move right on to other things, concentrating on the characters and their faces and their interactions, keeping the thing somewhat small and intimate.

In fact, I thought that the whole thing was being done somewhat on the cheap.  The downing of Ryan's helicopter in an Afghanistan war prelude was straight from Coppola's playbook: fast and confusing.  There is no big previsualized overdone long shot of the helicopter exploding.  You get the idea, then, it's off to Ryan being taken into a field hospital, bang.  Same thing with the sequence of Keira Knightly's Kathy being abducted.  Fast, tight, lots of shots, lots of confusion, over.

But the scale of the film changes once Ryan is recruited by Kevin Kostner's Harper character into the CIA, then sent to Moscow to infiltrate the doings of the Super Russian Bad Guy Cheverin, played by Mr. Branagh himself.

Of course, the bad guy in a picture like this has to be a formidable adversary.  The film's conception of international double-dealing and spy intrigue boils down to a personal grudge match between Cheverin and the CIA's invovlement in Afghanistan during the Soviet War in the 1980s.  These sorts of things certainly MUST be behind all of the economic turmoil we face these days, right? These story lines of the Evil Genius Who Wants to Destroy the World is getting harder and harder to sell to audiences.

So Cheverin is big, gruff, rich, has his own office tower where everything is black and so much slicker and intimidating than anything in America. He speaks in riddles, and like all bad guys, likes operatic music, paintings and literature; generally behaves like a brute.

On our side, we have Chris Pine as Jack Ryan, looking suitably rough, dashing or intelligent as the case requires, and Kevin Costner, looking quite rough and rumpled all the time.  Why should he worry? He has a two-picture deal.

In addition to the usual us-against-them, we have the contrast between the powerful black slickness of the Russians and their Land Rovers, and Our Guys, who are armed only with a bunch of over-designed laptops.

This works especially well in a variant on the Rear Window gambit: Have the CIA team watch as Ryan  sneaks into the bad guy's lair when we know Cheverin is otherwise engaged. Naturally, Cheverin, talking improbably with Keira Knightley about modern Russian literature, realizes that Ryan is breaking into his office, thereby endangering the girl, while Harper is guiding Ryan through his escape from the fortress - it's pretty good stuff. All the events flow reasonably one into the other, which is what makes me wonder: does life look like a spy movie to today's 20-year-olds?  Real life is a bit more chaotic. I wish for a few more screw-ups.

The outcome of all of this is never really in doubt. Despite some tense moments in the relationship between Ryan and his girlfriend Kathy, we know that they will be OK, that everything will work out in the end.  I also liked the scene in the CIA airplane flying back to the U.S.; Pine is enough of a smart fellow in real life to be able to pull off the gymnastic leaps of data gathering and logical conclusions demonstrated in this scene, but what I liked was Kathy's reaction to Jack's performance.  This is a side of her B.F. that she has never seen before.  Too bad this is a PG-13 movie (one "fuck" only, please), or else we should be seeing the aftermath: hot monkey sex all over the place. She likes this Jack Ryan better than the other one!

Too bad also that the finale to the picture is IN THE TRAILER!

I am pleased to report that this is a quite enjoyable film.  The spy picture has been a reliable genre for a while now, it will be interesting to see if modern audiences will respond to this mixture of Us vs. Them, Guys with guns and the Gals with innocent looks than Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit provides.