Jack Ryan Shadow Recruit

After directing five Shakespeare films — and a dozen others — in Jack Ryan, Shadow Recruit Kenneth Brannagh proves his deft hand at the commercial thriller. It works. In fact, there are so many thriller set-pieces you don’t notice there aren’t any sex scenes.                           They include a war-time shelling, love blooming in dramatic rehab, a close-quarters surprise assassination attempt, a high-tension nocturnal office invasion, a lavish car chase, a sewer chase and fight, several hand-to-hand combats and shoot-outs, a high-tech office tower chase, and the hero’s rescue of his kidnapped lady just as she’s about to have a vapour lightbulb — energy efficient — rammed down her gullet. But the real thriller set-piece is more cerebral — the CIA uses a mass of computer-stored details about everyday citizens to track down the Russian sleeper in quiet Pennsylvania.

In this prequel to the Jack Ryan franchise young Jack (Chris Pine) is equally jock and genius. Both physically and mentally he shows amazing stamina and ingenuity. The evil Russians’ scheme involves the same combination of material and abstract, a terrorist bombing of Wall Street coupled with a massive sell-off of American money to destroy the economy. Aptly, the CIA saves the day by accessing a web of stored minutiae. 

There lies the film’s political thrust. When scads of massively irrelevant info are mined for patterns the happy ending proves the necessity for all that spying the government has been doing even on private citizens, in the US and beyond. This ultra-modern deployment of numbers contrasts to the old-fashioned secret meeting at the old film, Sorry, Wrong Number.

The American right wing will feel justified in its government’s snooping because here it works. Ryan’s mentor, the welcome back Kevin Costner, dissociates himself from his government’s water boarding but happily — and fruitfully — works the unchecked spying.

The liberals will enjoy seeing their lad Brannagh succeed in a popular genre. So Shakespeare doesn’t rot your mind and narrative skills after all. But it’s the right that will find this film most reassuring.