Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan is back, this time played by Star Trek’s Chris Pine. In a cinema landscape already dominated by a rough-and-tumble James Bond, the always clever Jason Bourne, and whoever Jason Statham and and Liam Neeson are playing this week, this film’s silly Russian terrorist plots feel as dated as selling bootleg yankee bluejeans in Gorky Park. Kenneth Branagh not only directs this, but he also stars as the swarthy Russian villain who’s planning an attack on Wall Street in order to cripple the U.S. economy. Ryan is a secret CIA agent who becomes operational when his handler (Kevin Costner, who was born for stuff like this) sends him to Moscow to figure out what the hell is going on. Branagh is a capable director, but the screenplay and editing is so rigid and mechanical, it feels as if it was made by a committee.