Review by Mariel Opto
Intelligence is a weapon.
If you’re into Wall Street, Stock Exchange, and undercover- CIA-agents-trying-to-have-a-love-life-while-saving-the-world-on-the-side then this movie is for you!
I was lucky enough to watch the press screening of Jack Ryan : Shadow Recruit held at IMAX Theater Mall of Asia last January 13, 2014.
Jack Ryan is Tom Clancy’s soldier turned CIA analyst character who has survived even though being played by several castings like Alec Baldwin in “The Hunt for Red October,” Harrison Ford in “Clear and Present Danger” and “Patriot Games,” and Ben Affleck in “The Sum of All Fears.”
Jack Ryan : Shadow Recruit is the 5th installment of this film series and is a reboot that differentiates it from the previous movies. Also, unlike other previous movies Shadow Recruit not an adaptation of any particular Tom Clancy novel but was developed by screenwriter Hossein Amini.
SPOILER ALERT!
Jack Ryan (Chris Pine), dropped out of London School of Economics the day the Twin Towers got attacked. He then enlists himself to serve in Afghanistan, but a mortar attack on the helicopter he was on, cuts his tour of duty short and left him seriously wounded.
He was then taken to Walter Reed hospital for rehabilitation of his spine and leg injuries. There he meets and is taken cared for by 3rd year undergrad PhD, Cathy Muller (Kiera Knightly) (who would later become his fiancee).
It was also there that he meets Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner), a CIA recruiting naval officer, who impressed by Ryan’s deft analyses of patterns and threats decides to offer him a job as an undercover analyst to look after terrorists’ financial footprints to prevent any further attacks.
Years later, Jack discovers some suspicious activities in the trading of one of their Russian clients. After informing Harper, he gets sent to Russia to investigate undercover.
There he meets businessman Viktor Cherevin (Kenneth Branagh) who happens to be the master mind of planning a massive economic crisis and embed operative bombs in Lower Manhattan, Wall Street.
As Jack battles through keeping his identity and decoding Cherevin’s recipe for catastrophe, his fiancee Cathy, who is suspecting him of having an affair, surprises him by following her to Moscow.
Will Jack confess his real job to his fiancee? Can Cathy accept the life that she unknowingly chose? Will the CIA be able to stop Cherevin’s plot to cripple the global economy?
Unlike recent action movies which rely heavily on fight scenes and massive explosion, Shadow Recruit focuses more on the narrative and the conspiracies behind it. It is a breath of fresh air from the on going demand of sci-fi love stories of vampires, werewolves, half-breeds and so on.
I love action-packed films. Anything I watch that seems to splurge with adrenaline is great for me. I loved the fact that the movie shows patriotism and how one could push himself further to a better outcome as long as they find ways to do so and never give up.
Even though some critics said it was more of the same break-in steal data concept–except for the scenes which show how you can get encrypted data using a wall socket, and hacking high tech security systems– I think its fairly interesting to know if these kinds of technology will be the norm in the near future.
Unlike older films where the hero has to get through an army to reach the secured vault that hides some important data, the Spy genre has become more cerebral in a way that our heroes tend to use more tech than guns in accomplishing their mission.
I guess that’s why one of the tag lines for this movie is “Intelligence is a weapon.” I sure hope they looked into that perspective as well in Hollywood.
From time to time it’s great to see movies with car chase, bombs and explosives, fist fights, blood lust and so on but we have to take in consideration that this movie is set differently specially from its previous installments.
“Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” is now showing in cinemas and is released and distributed by United International Pictures through Solar Entertainment Corp.
