Several years back I invented a new movie category: Friday Night Fluff. That's a movie you can escape into after a hard week at work, without taxing your brain too much but without actually insulting your intelligence. Jack Ryan Shadow Recruit fails because while it was hardly taxing, I did regard it as a bit of an insult. They threw every cliché in the book at this one. Kevin Costner is probably the best thing in it. It's truly inadequate on every level - predictable, self important and in a few places, quite laughable.
I like Chris Pine as Captain Kirk in the Star Trek re-boot, but he is totally miscast here, and as for Keira Knightley as a gifted doctor..? Arghhh!! She's about as convincing as I would be as a gifted NFL Quarterback. Leaving aside the fact that Ms Knightley has but one facial expression and it involves a forward thrust jaw (which she has put to use in every movie since Bend it like Beckham), I found the 'morning after the night before' scene where she wakes up in bed with Chris Pine's Ryan, simply laughable. There she is, after what is intimated might have been a night of passion, in full un-smudged make up, including copious amounts of perfect eye shadow, and with not so much as a hair out of place. That was the point at which the female part of the audience cracked up laughing, because we all know that she should look like a panda. And if they can't be bothered to even get that right, why should I suspend belief and bother with the rest of this twaddle?
There are also some egregious editing faults. This just drives me nuts, it's such an insult to the audience, so lazy, so cynical. One moment the villain is clinging to a chain about to be swept away by a torrent of water, the next he's in the back of a truck barreling down the road with the hero. Or did I fall asleep and miss something vital?
How on earth did Kenneth Brannagh get sucked into this, either as an actor or director? My, but he must need the money... I found his Russian villain pretty clichéd too. Admittedly, it's hard to pull off an eastern European bad guy without parodying Blofeld. Patrick Stewart had it about right in the original TV series of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; he just looked tough and kept his mouth shut.
The plot revolves around Chris Pine's Ryan (a gifted economist) being embedded in a Wall Street business, where he uncovers a plot in a Russian subsidiary to fund terrorism in the US and bring the financial world crashing down around our ears. Ryan is an undercover CIA agent, and his subsequent trip to Moscow, followed by Knightley (his g/f), leads to one of the worst lines I have heard in a movie in a long time
Ryan: I'm in the CIA
G/F: Thank God - I thought you were having an affair.
Unfortunately all the writing is of this caliber. And isn't it interesting that we have come full circle and those damn Ruskies are back as public enemy #1? Ironic really, when you recall that in 2008 we managed to bring the financial world crashing down around our ears all by ourselves and without the aid of either the Russians or terrorism.
I like Chris Pine as Captain Kirk in the Star Trek re-boot, but he is totally miscast here, and as for Keira Knightley as a gifted doctor..? Arghhh!! She's about as convincing as I would be as a gifted NFL Quarterback. Leaving aside the fact that Ms Knightley has but one facial expression and it involves a forward thrust jaw (which she has put to use in every movie since Bend it like Beckham), I found the 'morning after the night before' scene where she wakes up in bed with Chris Pine's Ryan, simply laughable. There she is, after what is intimated might have been a night of passion, in full un-smudged make up, including copious amounts of perfect eye shadow, and with not so much as a hair out of place. That was the point at which the female part of the audience cracked up laughing, because we all know that she should look like a panda. And if they can't be bothered to even get that right, why should I suspend belief and bother with the rest of this twaddle?
There are also some egregious editing faults. This just drives me nuts, it's such an insult to the audience, so lazy, so cynical. One moment the villain is clinging to a chain about to be swept away by a torrent of water, the next he's in the back of a truck barreling down the road with the hero. Or did I fall asleep and miss something vital?
How on earth did Kenneth Brannagh get sucked into this, either as an actor or director? My, but he must need the money... I found his Russian villain pretty clichéd too. Admittedly, it's hard to pull off an eastern European bad guy without parodying Blofeld. Patrick Stewart had it about right in the original TV series of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; he just looked tough and kept his mouth shut.
The plot revolves around Chris Pine's Ryan (a gifted economist) being embedded in a Wall Street business, where he uncovers a plot in a Russian subsidiary to fund terrorism in the US and bring the financial world crashing down around our ears. Ryan is an undercover CIA agent, and his subsequent trip to Moscow, followed by Knightley (his g/f), leads to one of the worst lines I have heard in a movie in a long time
Ryan: I'm in the CIA
G/F: Thank God - I thought you were having an affair.
Unfortunately all the writing is of this caliber. And isn't it interesting that we have come full circle and those damn Ruskies are back as public enemy #1? Ironic really, when you recall that in 2008 we managed to bring the financial world crashing down around our ears all by ourselves and without the aid of either the Russians or terrorism.
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