Jack Ryan - Shadow Recruit

Keira Knightly needs to eat more. I think she has a pretty face but the screen takes AWAY 20 lbs on her. Chris Pine is good as the younger Jack Ryan character played as an older man by Alec Baldwin in The Hunt For Red October. There were may other books and movies where Ryan was the hero and in those ones Harrison Ford took over the role. Regardless of the one playing Jack Ryan, I like these kind of movies because they move fast. Political intrigue at the highest levels is interesting to me. Many big names stars like Kevin Cosner, and Kenneth Branagh, fill out an interesting cast.

Pine's Jack Ryan is a analyst that has a genius for putting together patterns and finding anomalies but he misses out on the little picture just as he totally notices the big picture. That is where sad girlfriend Keira Knightly comes into play. Oh and so she could be put in danger in an exotic foreign city like Moscow and Paris. There relationship only gets good when she is put in danger so for that reason she is a plot device. I never believe the relationship between the two leads for a second. Thankfully this movie doesn't need to rely on that for it's dramatic tension. There is more than enough of that to go around.

The plan is pretty ingenious from the Russian standpoint and is complicated enough for only one person named Jack Ryan to figure out while running from everyone trying to kill him - for a guy who took two years to relearn how to walk after a helicopter accident, Pine's character seems to do a awful lot of running and jumping and running.

I do admit however that I was into it on a Sunday afternoon. Pine is more like an everyman version of Matt Damon's Jason Bourne. He actually feels remorse for the killing he has to do.

Exotic locals are always nice in these kind of movies. Strangers in a strange land just ramps up the tension. Plus it's nice to have pretty things to look at while trying to figure out what exactly is going on at all times. I was waiting for twists that I knew were coming. A movie like this doesn't usually work without a twist or two and this one is refreshingly twist free.

The technology they employ in the field is also interesting. I like how the good guys have to think three steps ahead of their adversary just to keep up and use team work and technology to do so.

This movie is average but interesting enough to fill an hour and a half while waiting for the next episode of 24.