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| Captain Kirk stole Jack Ryan's clothes during his rendezvous in Moscow, Russia |
The newest installment of the Tom Clancy film series is a
reboot of sorts. Since 2002’s The Sum Of All Fears starred Ben Affleck as Jack
Ryan, eventual attempts to bring back the series didn’t as hoped for movie
studio Paramount. Sam Raimi, who once helmed the original Spider-Man film
series from 2002-2007, was tapped to direct the newest installment to give his
fresh take on the series, but nothing turned up, because he was working on a
potential fourth Spider-Man film, which, we now know as The Amazing Spider-Man,
sans all of the Raimi-isms.
Chris Pine, who plays Captain James
T Kirk in the Star Trek movies was on tap to be in the next version of this
series in 2009, but had to commit to that film. Before Pine ever stepped foot
into the shoes of the CIA fable, Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and the
aforementioned Affleck portrayed the character. So how’s Pine in relation to
his predecessors? Good enough for me. Frankly, I was surprised that he handled
the weight of this person with care. I won’t say it was a transcending
performance, but he was very good overall.
Some of the geopolitical stuff did go over my head a little and so did
some of the book references, like when he and Cathy, played by Keira Knightley,
meet for the first time, when Ryan is recouping from his severe injuries from a
plane accident in Afghanistan. When witnessing the rebirth of a high-profile
character like Ryan, especially, when you haven’t read the books, confusion is
to be expected when you’re trying to figure out this universe. It wasn’t that
the entire franchise was unfamiliar to me, I was just a little unaccustomed to
some stuff here.
The plot, itself, has to do with
Ryan working in a covert role at a stock exchange in New York. His job is to
keep tabs on financial transactions from various parts of the world to make
sure that the system isn’t being gamed from someone on the outside. Then, it’s
discovered that a geopolitical partner goes in a different direction from that
of the United States, Ryan realizes that the money from Russia (yeah, they’re
in the news, a lot, these days) is being hidden from plain site. It’s an
interesting angle that I wish went further in the closing minutes of the film,
but it did its job. Kenneth Branagh and Kevin Costner play important roles
here, with Branagh (who also directed this film) playing Viktor Cheverin, the
person in control of the funds, while Costner plays a father figure type to
Ryan. The acting is top-notch by entire cast. It’ll take time getting used to
the actors playing these characters, if you haven’t followed the novels or films, considering it took a while for this
film to be developed, unfamiliarity is sure to be abound. It runs at a solid
pace with some nice plot twists throughout the movie. In a time where the
suspense genre needed something different, Shadow Recruit is the movie for you.
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