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TV show review: CONTINUUM season 4
PHOTOGRAPHY

JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT

Movie review by David Blackwell

 

107 minutes, rated PG-13

STUDIO:  Paramount Pictures/ Skydance Pictures/ Di Bonaventura Pictures/ Mace Neufeld Productions/ Buckaroo Entertainment

Theatrical RELEASE DATE: 1-17-2014

 

STARRING Chris Pine (Jack Ryan), Kevin Costner (Thomas Harper), Kenneth Branagh (Victor Cherevin), Keira Knightley (Cathy Muller)

WRITTEN by Adam Cozad and David Koepp

Based on characters created by Tom Clancy

DIRECTED by Kenneth Branagh

Jack Ryan is rebooted for the second time in this latest origin story about Jack Ryan as he goes to be a soldier due to September 11th, 2001 and ends up injured during active duty and gets a job offer from the CIA (Kevin Costner as Thomas Harper) to end up an undercover CIA agent working in Wall Street tracking economic transactions.   Jack spots some unusual activity from a big Russian business run by Victor Cherevin.  He is soon ordered by the CIA to make a visit to Russia where Cherevin isn’t taking any chances his big act of economic terrorism is discovered (before it is too late).   Complicating Ryan’s mission is his girlfriend Cathy taking a surprise trip to see him in Moscow.

 

JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT is an entertaining spy thriller where I think the plan of bombing Wall Street to bring about the Second Depression (with the combination of short selling the US Dollar) is a little farfetched (the combo of the two things) and economic terrorism plan would have been fine without making things go boom.  However, they need some type of explosion to lure the audience in for this type of movie, but I would have been satisfied without the big chase and trying to make things not go boom climax.   I do believe the economic terrorism angle of selling stocks and currency is an all too real reality given the economic stress the world is in and many countries being deeply in debt as they try to maintain the economy through various Ponzi schemes.   Despite the climax being built up more than it needed to be, I did rather enjoy JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT.  Keneth Branagh directed a tight and nuanced thriller for the 21st century with a good cast and Branagh managing to go toe to toe with any of the actors in it (whether it is Chris Pine of Keira Knightley).

 

This review is ©1-21-2014 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission.  Send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com

 

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