TOM CLANCY’S JACK RYAN (multiple directors). All eight episodes available on Amazon Prime Friday (August 31). Rating: NNN
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan drops on Amazon Video on Friday (August 31), once again tracing the character’s journey from CIA analyst to international man of action – and letting John Krasinski offer his own interpretation on the character, who’s been rebooted more times than Spider-Man.
How does he measure up? Read on, true believer.
Alec Baldwin, The Hunt For Red October (1990)
First Ryan, best Ryan. John McTiernan’s clockwork thriller – as perfect an execution of its genre as Die Hard was two years earlier – found the ideal Ryan in the up-and-coming Baldwin, who audiences knew as a ghost in Beetlejuice and a dope in Married To The Mob, if they knew him at all.
He gives the character a reluctant heroism and a streak of nervous humour that wasn’t present in Tom Clancy’s novel, which sell the story’s escalating stakes: the world is teetering on the brink of thermonuclear war, and we’re feeling sorry for the poor analyst stuck in the middle of it all.
The film also introduces James Earl Jones as Ryan’s mentor, James Greer he’d reprise the role in Harrison Ford’s films.
Harrison Ford, Patriot Games (1992) and Clear And Present Danger (1994)
Ford’s really playing two different characters in Philip Noyce’s RedOctober sequels, and only the first one is recognizably Jack Ryan – CIA analyst, family man and, most importantly, an ex-Marine whose training takes over when he happens to be on the scene of an attack on British royals in London.
Two years later, Ford chose to reinterpret the character as a nervous wonk too panicked to pick up a gun when his convoy is under fire in Colombia. It confuses things.
Ben Affleck, The Sum Of All Fears (2002)
Phil Alden Robinson’s reboot makes Affleck’s Ryan a rookie analyst who thwarts a scheme to force America and Russia to go to war… but not before an Austrian neo-Nazi detonates a nuclear weapon at a Baltimore football stadium.
Affleck’s a surprisingly good fit for Ryan – the smugness that was his signature at the time reads as an overconfidence the character needs to grow beyond – but Paramount didn’t proceed with a new series of films.
Chris Pine, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)
The first Jack Ryan movie not directly adapted from Clancy’s books – and released just months after his death in 2013 – is another reboot, with Pine’s Ryan joining the military after 9/11 and being recruited into the CIA by a shady character (Kevin Costner), who eventually sends him to Moscow on his very first mission.
Director and co-star Kenneth Branagh tweaks things by having Ryan’s girlfriend, Cathy (Keira Knightley, with a very jarring American accent), surprise him on the trip, and ultimately becoming an active partner in his adventures.
John Krasinski, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan (2018)
The casting of Krasinski as Ryan is its own kind of coup. Who better to start off as a weary office worker than Jim Halpert, who constantly channelled the existential terror of knowing one is meant for better things?
The actor is equally deft at selling the more dynamic side of Ryan in a brand-new plot that sends the character into the field – along with Wendell Pierce as a younger version of James Greer – in search of a mysterious terror financier (Ali Suliman).
This being a TV series, there’s also time to explore Jack’s budding romance with Cathy Mueller (Abbie Cornish). Even if we know where it’s going, it’s nice to take some time and appreciate their connection.
normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner
