In a slow moving action packed drama, a younger version of Jack Ryan is back. Here he is trying to stop the Russians from crashing the US Economy with a terrorist attack.
Chris Pine plays Jack Ryan, the soldier of the Tom Clancy novels instead of Harrison Ford. In Shadow Recruit, the movie starts out with Ryan enlisting in the Marines after 911 and going to Afghanistan. A chopper that he would get on would be shot down and he would suffer injuries where he would require intense rehab.
From there, he would meet Cathy Mueller, played by Keira Knightly. She would help him and eventually, she would become part of his life as his girlfriend although you don’t know too much about that since the movie switches to the present where he becomes analyst for the CIA.
After that, much of the movie focuses on Ryan working on Wall Street and looking into financial indiscretions in the market. He discovers a plot by the Russians that will crash the market and the movie takes off from there.
The movie becomes intense from there. The subplot is that Cathy seems to think that Ryan is having an affair and she gets involved in his mission as a result. That only builds the suspense as the movie moves further. Adding Kevin Costner to the movie only made it better.
I’ve read Tom Clancy novels in the past and my feeling is that they were really drawn out and much too long. In this movie, that seems to be more of the same since it moves from Ryan’s early life when he enlisted in the Marines. For a movie that is barely under two hours, I just wonder how important it was to the movie.
In any case, I will say that I enjoyed this movie in any case and it was worth five stars.
Ron Hummer
Good movie for a January release date. It featured some pretty solid performances.
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