Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

Plot

After the terrorist attacks on 9/11, Jack Ryan (Pine), studying at the LSE (London School of Economics), becomes a U.S. Marine second lieutenant fighting in Afghanistan, where his spine is critically injured when his helicopter is shot down. During a lengthy recovery back in the United States, he attracts the attention of Cathy Muller (Knightley), a medical student helping him learn to walk again, and Thomas Harper (Costner), an official with the CIA who recruits him.

Ten years later, Ryan is working on Wall Street covertly for the CIA looking for suspicious financial transactions that would indicate terrorist activity. When the Russian Federation loses a key vote before the United Nations, Ryan notices that the markets do not respond in the expected way. He discovers that billions of dollars held by Russian organizations have disappeared. A large number of these funds are controlled by Viktor Cherevin (Branagh), a Russian tycoon.

Ryan's employer conducts business with Cherevin, so when Ryan discovers certain accounts are inaccessible to him as an auditor, he has reason to visit Moscow and investigate. On arrival he narrowly survives a murder attempt by an assassin (Anozie) posing as his bodyguard. Ryan sends an SOS and is surprised to learn his backup is Harper. During their debrief, Ryan explains how Cherevin's shadow investments could make the United States vulnerable to complete financial collapse following a staged terrorist attack, which would also weaken global markets.

At his meeting with Cherevin the next day, he is told that the problem company and all of its assets have been sold, thus preventing Ryan's audit. Meanwhile, Muller, now Ryan's fiancée, concerned he may be having an affair, secretly flies to Moscow to meet him. Against protocol for unmarried couples, Ryan reveals that he works for the CIA, to her great relief. Improvising on the situation, Harper has Muller agree to be included in a plan to infiltrate Cherevin's offices. Ryan and Muller meet Cherevin at an upscale restaurant across the street from Cherevin's office. Over dinner, Ryan causes a scene and purposely insults Muller. Excusing himself, he gains access to Cherevin's office where he downloads critical corruption files.

Ryan and the CIA discover Cherevin used a falsified death certificate to place his son, Aleksandr (Utgoff), in the United States as a sleeper agent. Ryan uses his talent for pattern recognition to locate Aleksandr's hideout and intended target, Wall Street. He locates a fake police response vehicle driven by Aleksandr and gives chase. After Ryan catches up and engages in a physical confrontation with Aleksandr, he discovers the bomb in the rear of the police decoy. Unable to defuse it, he hijacks the vehicle with Aleksandr in it. He later crashes it into the East River while simultaneously jumping out, as the bomb detonates, killing Aleksandr. Cherevin is executed by his co-conspirators in Russia. Ryan and Harper are called to the White House to brief the president.

Development

After the financial success of their film The Sum of All Fears (2002), Paramount Pictures made attempts to continue the Jack Ryan film series, but nothing came to fruition. In 2008, the company engaged director Sam Raimi to spearhead a revival of the series, but he later dropped out due to his commitment to the Spider-Man film series.

In October 2009, Paramount and co-financier Skydance Productions were negotiating with actor Chris Pine to portray Jack Ryan in a film based on Tom Clancy's character, but not on any of the books. At the time, producers Mace Neufeld and Lorenzo di Bonaventura were working with an original concept drafted by Hossein Amini, with David Ready serving as co-producer for di Bonaventura. In August 2010, director Jack Bender was the frontrunner to direct the film, based on a script tentatively titled Moscow by Adam Cozad. The following month, writer Anthony Peckham was brought on to perform rewrites, and later Steve Zaillian, who wrote the screenplay for Clear and Present Danger (1994), was engaged to perform rewrites as well. However, Zaillian withdrew after a few weeks and the film was put on hold by Paramount in order for Pine to reprise his role as James T. Kirk in Star Trek Into Darkness. During this time, David Koepp was brought on to rewrite the script, with shooting scheduled to begin in the second half of 2012.

The film faced another setback in March 2012, when director Bender dropped out due to scheduling conflicts. Paramount and Skydance Pictures quickly hired Kenneth Branagh to replace him, in order to start production after Pine was finished with Into Darkness around September 2012. "This script arrived and was un-put-down-able and I knew the previous films, I'd read some of the books and, simple as that, it came out of the blue", said Branagh. "I was going to be making another movie, but it went away and this one came to me and I read it and responded very strongly and it's the kind of the film that I go to see".

Pre-production

Pre-production for Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit took place at the production offices of August Street Films Limited, based at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire. Months after signing on as director, Kenneth Branagh also made a deal with the studio to star as the film's villain.

In early August 2012, Keira Knightley, Felicity Jones, and Evangeline Lilly were being considered for the female lead while Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel were approached but declined. Days later, Knightley won the role. That same month, Kevin Costner signed on to play Thomas Harper in a two-picture deal that will also see him play the character in a film adaptation of Clancy's Without Remorse.

Production

While images from the film's production in Manhattan surfaced in late August 2012, Paramount Pictures and Skydance Productions did not announce the start of principal photography on Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit until September 18, 2012. At that time, filming took place in Liverpool City Centre, which doubled as Moscow. Filming in New York City had been completed earlier that month. Other shooting locales included London and Moscow. Later, reshoots were also done in New York City.

Music

The musical score of Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit was composed by Patrick Doyle, who has collaborated on many of Kenneth Branagh's directorial efforts. Writing the score took Doyle up to seven months, which is more than usual. "In Jack Ryan, [Kenneth] wanted a piece of music for this scene and I had the theme the following day for it," said Doyle on his relationship with Branagh. "I actually wrote the main theme of the movie, just sitting there watching it. This is the expectation of a person you’re very close to. There’s no pressure in that you’re so relaxed, especially someone like Kenneth. He brings out the best in you because he creates such a casual, relaxed, but hard-working environment at the same time." A soundtrack album was released digitally by Varèse Sarabande on January 14, 2014 and in physical formats on February 4.

Release

The film was originally scheduled to be released on December 25, 2013, but was pushed back to January by Paramount Pictures to give the release date to Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street. It then was slated for release on January 17, 2014, corresponding with the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in the United States. In August 2013, Paramount began rolling out a trailer for the film to test audiences bearing the title Jack Ryan: Shadow One. On October 2, 2013, a day after the death of Tom Clancy, the first film poster was released, featuring the new title, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. The first trailer for the film was released the same day. In December 2014, Pine confirmed that there would not be a sequel to the film due to its lackluster box office performance.

The film was later released in Video on Demand format for home media markets on May 20, 2014. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray formats by Paramount Home Entertainment on June 10, 2014.

Box office

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit earned $5.4 million on its opening day in North American markets. and reached $17.2 million by the end of its opening weekend. The film opened below all previous Jack Ryan films despite a wider theatre count. Based on exit-polling service CinemaScore, more than a third of the film's opening weekend audience was over the age of 50. With only 15 percent of viewers under the age of 25, the film failed to attract younger viewers despite the casting of Chris Pine. The film is the twenty-fourth highest grossing of 2014 and was the first film of the year to have reached over $100 million worldwide. During its theatrical run, the film had grossed $50.6 million domestically and $85 million in foreign business, for a worldwide total of $135.6 million.

Critical response

On critique aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film received 56% positive reviews with an average score of 5.7/10, based on 165 reviews. The site's consensus reads: "It doesn't reinvent the action-thriller wheel, but Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit offers a sleek, reasonably diverting reboot for a long-dormant franchise." On Metacritic which assigns a weighted average out of 100 to critics' reviews, it holds a metascore of 57, based on 36 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". CinemaScore reported that audiences gave the film a "B" grade.

Peter Hartlaub of the San Francisco Chronicle gave the film a positive review, saying, "Under taut direction from Kenneth Branagh (who also plays the Russian heavy), Pine is convincing as a character who is pushing papers one day and dodging assassins in Moscow the next." Hartlaub added, "Even with its thrifty set pieces and smaller ambitions, this attempt to reboot the series based on Tom Clancy characters does the most important thing right: It almost always feels like a Jack Ryan movie." Kyle Smith of the New York Post also gave the film a positive review. Smith said, "Despite the occasional hard-to-believe moment, the reboot of the 1990s franchise is soundly structured, smart and fast, with a plausible central scenario, several gripping moments and well-wrought dialogue. If it isn’t quite as gritty or intelligent as the Bourne movies, it is [...] close enough."

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone was less enthusiastic about the film, saying it "has no personality of its own." Travers added, "It's a product constructed out of spare parts and assembled with computerized precision. It's hard to care when Jack turns operational and becomes a CIA robocop. The movie feels untouched by human hands." Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter also gave the film a negative review, saying, "While [the film] benefits from an attractive cast, the perennial allure of the spy game and the exoticism of the contemporary Moscow setting, the biggest problem afflicting this modest diversion is that it's the sort of film in which computers get to the bottom of every problem that comes up in about five seconds."