Eventually all long-running franchises face a moment of reckoning: either move with the times or perish. That moment has occurred for Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan several times during the character’s four decades of existence. Introduced during the strutting, cocky Reagan years, Ryan was very much of his time: armed with boy-scout ethics and spy smarts, the staunch patriot and former Marine deftly navigated geopolitical crises while still finding time to be a loving husband and father. His apple-pie heroism was perfectly in step with Clancy’s gleaming, tech-obsessed adventures, wherein villains were clear-cut, and no terrorist plot could withstand good old American ingenuity and cutting-edge weaponry.
Ironically enough, Ryan made his big-screen debut with The Hunt for Red October just as the Soviet empire was collapsing in 1990. Directed with assurance by John McTiernan, the movie remains the character’s finest hour to date. Although everyone primarily remembers Sean Connery as a Lithuanian sub captain with an inexplicable Scottish accent, Alec Baldwin makes for a persuasive Ryan, gung-ho and geeky about his work when he’s not getting reluctantly thrown into the midst of chaos. (“Next time, write a memo, Jack,” he chides himself just before he falls into the churning seas of the Atlantic.)
Harrison Ford assumed the role in subsequent entries (Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger), and while the global derring-do and intelligence shenanigans remained, Ford was more boy scout than brainy operator. Jaw clenched, all atremble with righteousness, this was a Ryan who would shout “How dare you sir!” at the President himself, and look upon politicians and their “Potomac Two-Step” with disdain. Of course, that didn’t stop Tom Clancy from taking the character all the way to the White House in his books — and naturally, President Ryan ended up saving the world numerous times.
Since those halcyon Baldwin-Ford days, the Ryan concept has struggled to update itself for our current sober climate of intelligence snafus and terrorism as a way of life. 2002’s The Sum of All Fears planted Ben Affleck’s Ryan in the middle of a nuclear catastrophe in the wake of 9-11, but except for Liev Schreiber’s sly turn as John Clark, the spec-ops brawn to Ryan’s brains, the movie is entirely forgettable. Even worse was 2014’s Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, which attempted to reboot Ryan (Chris Pine) as a Jason Bourne wanna-be. Take away Kenneth Branagh’s baddie (and his florid Russian accent), and you’re left with something less entertaining than any random episode of 24. And there was the rub: with television series like 24 and Homeland supplying counterintelligence thrills while movies like Zero Dark Thirty specialized in the pulse-pounding exploits of spec ops, how could Ryan hope to compete?
In response, Amazon’s new Jack Ryan series tries to be all things to all people. Ryan (John Krasinski) is now a fresh-faced intelligence recruit, and while he’s still a boy scout, he’s not above action heroics. His updated milieu reflects the grayer shades of today: America may still be convinced of the rightness of its cause, but that doesn’t prevent side characters like a drone pilot (John Magaro) from suffering PTSD over lives taken. Meanwhile, Ryan’s new boss and eventual mentor Greer (Wendell Pierce) has been reformatted as a practicing Muslim with his own checkered professional history. Suleiman (Ali Suliman), the first season’s primary villain, is even given a sympathetic backstory for his motivations, hinting that the US is as complicit in birthing terror as it is in combating it.
Ultimately, these gestures towards complexity were only skin-deep, as Jack Ryan‘s first season followed the Clancy formula of very bad baddies and very good good guys. Both handy behind a computer terminal and super-competent in the field, Ryan was now an improbable all-around bad-ass, and only Krasinski’s innate likability suggested something human behind the construct. Save for one genius stroke — terrorists communicating with each other via a multiplayer online game, and Ryan impersonating one of them in a breathtaking gambit — the story was a solid assemblage which went nowhere new.
Showrunners Carlton Cuse and Graham Roland change things up slightly — very slightly — for season 2. Where the first season was propelled by real-world anxieties over global terrorism, this season plays out mostly in Venezuela, with a more fanciful plot. Jack has moved on to the State department, but things get personal in a hurry when Senator Moreno (Benito Martinez), his former Marine buddy, is gunned down in an ambush. Pulled back into the spy game alongside Greer, his subsequent investigation reveals a conspiracy by Venezuelan President/Despot Reyes (Jordi Mollà) to uncover mineral riches in the jungle (a fictitious substance called “tantalum” if you must know, which is about as believable as the “unobtainium” in James Cameron’s Avatar). Providing the muscle (and most of the dirty work) for the good guys is Matice (John Hoogenakker), a proto-John Clark operative, but that doesn’t prevent Jack from mixing it up with terrorists himself, including a Mission: Impossible-styled chase across the rooftops of London.
Elsewhere, the season 1 template is assiduously applied. As in the previous season, a reluctant bystander is pulled into the action, in this case a former Sailor (Jovan Adepo) recruited by Matice for one last mercenary gig. While
Dina Shihabi was on hand to provide human interest in season 1 as a terrorist’s abused wife, our sympathetic local character this time around is Cristina Umaña, who plays Reyes’ democratic (natch) political rival. Saintly and principled, she’s just as cartoonish a figure of virtue as Mollà, squinting and popping his eyes in menace, is a caricature of evil. Meanwhile, Noomi Rapace flits in and out of the action as a former Swedish operative who doesn’t do a whole lot besides serving as Krasinski’s fleeting romantic interest. Michael Kelly adds some pep as Venezuelan station chief Mike November (a Clancy name if ever there was one), although his primary function is sanctioning Ryan’s morally squishy activities — like say, breaking into President Reyes’ palace with a group of commandos, machine gun in hand.
And therein lies the main problem with Amazon’s Jack Ryan: wanting to have its cake and eat it too, the series seeks to present a semi-realistic view of the spy game, but can’t resist improbable cowboy heroics. When one of the good guys takes out a dozen enemy combatants and then gives the rest of them the finger and a hearty “fuck you” when he’s cornered, the message is clear: We’re here to kick ass and chew gum, and we’re all out of gum. Still, as all the subplots peter out — betrayals within Reyes’ personal circle come off as second-rate Narcos, while a rivalry between Rapace and a freelance assassin played by Game of Thrones‘ Tom Wlaschiha climaxes with a damp squib of a showdown — it’s almost a relief when we get right down to infiltrating, shooting and fleeing. The sight of Matice, his boys and their gun boat skydiving into the jungle is a true adrenalized moment, as is an early ambush in which Ryan and his companions are caught in a kill box on a secluded Venezuelan street. But better than all of this is the tetchy bromance between Ryan and the marvelously dyspeptic Greer. Even though the story makes the mistake of separating them for long stretches, every time Ryan is on hand to needle Greer about his heart condition, or Greer notes what an asshole Ryan is, Jack Ryan has the zing of a buddy cop movie.
Sadly, moments like those are few and far between, as circular conversations, veiled threats, and none-too-thrilling plot and character “developments” take up most of the running time. Bent on revenging his friend’s death, Krasinski’s Ryan is in resolutely glum form here, with little opportunity to exhibit the underdog qualities that informed season 1. (His new beard basically does all the characterization for him.) When Jack is given the chance to execute the person responsible for his friend’s death, we’re meant to invest in the moral dilemma of the scene, but is there any doubt that Jack Ryan, ever the boy scout, will do the right thing, even though he and his commandos have already shot up the Presidential security detail of a sovereign foreign nation? There’s still a place for espionage fun that requires at least half a brain, but Jack Ryan can’t be bothered to engage more than a few brain cells at a time. What possible hi-jinks will President Ryan get himself into in future seasons? The mind reels.
