JACK RYAN: 5-FILM COLLECTION: 4K Blu-ray (Paramount, 1990-2014) Paramount Home Video

Uber-conservative, Thomas Leo Clancy Jr., better known in literati circles as Tom Clancy, brought a new American spirit and innovation to the traditional spy thriller with the publication of his very first novel, The Hunt for Red October (1984); an edge-of-your-seat page turner that managed to make even the most meticulously detailed espionage, palpably engaging. Clancy had hoped the book would sell at least 5000 copies; a figure, eventually ballooning to more than 300,000 in hard cover and 2 million in paperback after a winning endorsement from President Ronald Reagan, who thought it ‘the best yarn’. Of the 20 novels soon to follow it, penned before Clancy’s death in 2013 (several co-authored by Mark Greaney), a record-breaking 17 became bestsellers with more than 100 million copies cumulatively sold around the world.  With few exceptions, Clancy wrote and published a novel virtually every year, his pantheon of outstanding achievements eventually finding their way to Hollywood, transformed into even more widely-appreciated spectacles of action and espionage. Undeniably, Clancy’s most enduring legacy is embodied in the fictional character of Jack Ryan, the seemingly ‘every man’ who battles darker forces with a realistic reluctance. On screen, Ryan has been incarnated by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, Chris Pine, and John Krasinski, each actor bringing to light varying traits that flesh out a character otherwise fully formed in all of Clancy’s novels.

The Hunt for Red October (1990) was the first of Clancy’s novels to be reincarnated for the movies; director, John McTiernan helming this impressively mounted super-production that, despite its ‘dated’ cold war themes, continues to hold up spectacularly well under today’s scrutiny. Alec Baldwin, then very much considered the hottie du jour after fitful starts in 1987’s Forever Lulu, and supporting work in 1988’s Beetlejuice and Working Girl, was officially launched as a leading man in this film. Alas, Baldwin’s performance, at least in retrospect, is more than a little ‘wet behind the ears’, his take on Clancy’s CIA analyst cum reticent man of action, not altogether successful at playing upon Clancy’s own impressions of Ryan as the proverbial fish out of water. It is important to remember that Jack Ryan is not an action star cut from the same cloth as a John Rambo; the uniqueness of Clancy’s take on heroism itself, as just a man whose split-second insight makes crucial contributions without guns blazing, allows the rest of McTiernan’s ensemble to truly shine. Perhaps to counterbalance audiences’ expectations for the traditional actioner, we get Sean Connery as Marko Aleksandrovich Ramius, a crusty commander of this Russian nuclear sub (a part originally filled by Klaus Maria Brandauer, who inexplicably withdrew at the last possible moment, citing a conflict of commitments). Connery, whose reputation as James Bond has virtually colored all other big screen representations he has subsequently assumed, drew inspiration from his own previous military service in the Royal Navy in preparation for the part.

Recognizing the novel’s potential while it was still in galleys, producer, Mace Neufeld optioned The Hunt for Red October all the way back in 1985. Alas, convincing any studio to partake of his ambitious plans proved daunting to downright impossible, the rights to Clancy’s book languishing under Neufeld’s control for several years thereafter. It seemed no one except Neufeld could see the blockbuster potential until Paramount Pictures very reluctantly agreed to develop it, hiring screenwriters, Larry Ferguson and Donald Stewart. Later, at McTiernan’s request, their work would be heavily rewritten by filmmaker, John Milius. The U.S. Military’s concerns over leaked classified information and/or technology were offset by several admirals who, apart from having the deepest admiration for Clancy’s novel, thought a picture based on it might do for submariners what Top Gun (1986) had for jet fighter pilots. To this end, Neufeld was granted restricted access to two subs; the Chicago and Portsmouth, expertly rechristened in Terence Marsh’s production design as the fictional ‘Red October’. As filming within the confined quarters of a real sub was virtually impossible, five Paramount soundstages were converted into claustrophobic mock-ups of the Red October and its American counterpoint, the Dallas, cramming 62 cast and production crew into close quarters, mounted onto hydraulic gimbals to tilt at 45-degree angles, convincingly simulating underwater movement.

To avoid a Soviet/U.S. brouhaha over Mikhail Gorbachev’s then newly minted perestroika, the movie positions itself in Nov. 1984 (the waning bad ole days of the Cold War). We meet Soviet Captain Marko Ramius (Sean Connery with a laughable Russian accent), commander of the Red October, a Typhoon-class nuclear missile submarine with a stealth caterpillar drive that renders it moot to sonar detection. Ramius departs to conduct maneuvers with the attack sub, V. K. Konovalov, commanded by his former student, Captain Tupolev (Stellan Skarsgård). However, once at sea, Ramius murders political hack, Ivan Putin (Peter Firth) and relays false orders to the crew that they are on a collision course to conduct missile drills off America’s east coast. In Washington, CIA analyst and ex-marine Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) addresses the joint commanders on Red October’s theat. Vice Admiral James Greer’s (James Earl Jones) curious faith in Ryan’s clairvoyant abilities to cut through all the cloak and dagger is unassailable.  While the military fret over Ramius’ plans for an unauthorized nuclear strike, Ryan wisely deduces Ramius very likely plans to defect. Intrigued by Ryan’s hypothesis, National Security Advisor, Dr. Jeffrey Pelt (Richard Jordan) sets up a rendezvous between Ryan and the navy in the Atlantic.

The wily Tupolev anticipates Ramius’ route and plots a course to intercept and sink the Red October. Aboard the sub, an unknown miscreant sabotages the caterpillar drive, allowing Petty Officer Jones (Courtney B. Vance), a sonar technician aboard the USS Dallas to detect Red October. Meanwhile, Ryan stages a highly dangerous mid-ocean rendezvous with the Dallas. He implores Commander, Bart Mancuso (Scott Glenn) to contact Ramius and determine his true intentions. Perhaps already identifying the fallout from Ramius’ defection, Soviet Ambassador Andrei Lysenko (Josh Ackland) suggests Ramius is a renegade who must be stopped at all costs. The order to sink the Red October is given. But Ryan has been successful in convincing Mancuso the Russians want to defect – not attack. Mancuso offers Ramius and his men full support and Ramius, pleasantly surprised, accepts their aid. To throw his comrades off his scent, Ramius stages a false nuclear reactor emergency and orders his men to abandon ship.

With only his officers left aboard, Ramius submerges the Red October. Ryan, Mancuso, and Jones board her via a rescue sub and Ramius requests asylum. Red October is engaged in a surprise attack by the V. K. Konovalov. In all the ensuing chaos, the sub’s cook, Loginov (Tomas Arana) is revealed as the saboteur, an undercover GRU agent who fatally shoots First Officer Vasily Borodin (Sam Neill) and wounds Ramius. Ryan retaliates, killing Loginov before he can detonate one of Red October’s nuclear missiles. Skillfully, Ramius stages a series of evasive maneuvers that cause the V. K. Konovalov to be destroyed by its own torpedoes. Ryan and Ramius steer the Red October to Maine as Ramius confesses he could not support his initial directive of a first strike on the United States. As the Red October resurfaces, Ramius breathes a sigh of relief and Ryan, whimsically welcomes Ramius to his adopted country, quoting Christopher Columbus, “Welcome to the New World, sir.”

Despite its high stakes drama, overall The Hunt for Red October is a bit of a snooze. I have to admit, McTiernan’s glacial pace in storytelling was a problem for me in 1990 and remains thus in 2018. Do not misunderstand. I sincerely enjoy a well thought out narrative. But this one just seems to go on interminably before getting to the good stuff. While McTiernan excels in his visual storytelling, the plot never develops that prerequisite escalation for thrills. Alec Baldwin is another hurdle to overcome; Baldwin, then, too hung up on his newfound status as a ‘leading man’ to actually convince, either as the book-wormish system analyst or doting father and ‘common man’ who finds himself in these extraordinary circumstances. One gets the distinct sense Baldwin just wants to break out, hoping against hope for a flashier John McClaine-styled part a la Bruce Willis in McTiernan’s Die Hard (1988). As this never happens, Baldwin does his best to oraculate the technical aspects of the plot. He is given a lot of exposition on sub-building and does a fairly credible job of distilling specs and blueprints into engaging enough dialogue. But on the whole, he never quite sheds the image of an overindulgent ‘pretty boy’ who would rather be ogling starlets poolside at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Despite its shortcomings, The Hunt for Red October was a hit, grossing $200 million on a relatively restrained budget of $30 million. That Alec Baldwin did not reprise his role in subsequent films based on Tom Clancy’s novels is usually attributed to Baldwin’s prior commitments on Broadway’s revival of A Streetcar Named Desire. However, more recently, Baldwin has made the claim he deliberately withdrew from participation due to ‘sleazy Hollywood tools’ – whatever that means.

It is one of those Hollywood ironies that 1992’s Patriot Games – very loosely based on Tom Clancy’s second novel, itself caught in a lengthy gestation since 1979 – while bearing little resemblance to Clancy’s page-turner, nevertheless made a better movie than The Hunt for Red October, which adhered rather slavishly to Clancy’s own prose. Indeed, director Philip Noyce, working from a heavily rewritten screenplay by W. Peter Iliff and Donald E. Stewart manages the minor coup of capturing the essential flavor of Clancy’s plot and reluctant hero without actually running true to form. Clancy was so displeased with these results, despite Patriot Games impressive worldwide gross of $178,051,587 (and 2-consecutive weeks at No. 1 at the box office), he demanded his name be stricken from all promo materials; a ‘request’ that greatly soured both sides on conducting future business. Despite Clancy’s protestations, Patriot Games is a more artistically sound and generally more engrossing thriller. The onus for the picture’s success rests squarely on the shoulders of Harrison Ford, picking up after Baldwin’s departure, and, far more credible as the ‘average’ family man whose moral compass dictates his intervention in foiling an IRA assassination plot against members of Britain’s Royal family. Ford’s inimitable strength as an actor, particularly as he entered middle age, is his unassuming ‘every man’ quality – queerly at odds with his previous big screen alter egos: Star Wars’ Han Solo, and, infamous archaeologist, Indiana Jones. We can believe in Ford as the basically ‘good guy’ who just happens to step up to the plate for truth and justice. He doesn’t need a blaster, whip or any other implement of war to do it either.  

Patriot Games begins as newly retired CIA analyst, Jack Ryan is on vacation in London with his wife, Caroline (Anne Archer) and daughter, Sally (Thora Birch).  Witnessing a terrorist attack on Lord William Holmes (James Fox), Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Ryan orders his wife and child to take cover; then, intervenes, intercepting a gun from one of the would-be assassins and shooting another, Patrick Miller (Karl Hayden), as his defeated elder brother, Sean (Sean Bean) looks on. The remaining attackers, including Kevin O’Donnell (Patrick Bergin) make a successful escape, leaving Sean to take the full blame. Sean vows revenge on Ryan for killing his brother. At trial, Ryan exposes Sean as part of a splinter cell of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. The open wound of deep-seeded revenge only widens between them. Alas, Sean will get his chance to avenge Patrick’s death. Meanwhile, within the IRA, a new plot is brewing to put O’Donnell out of his misery. He is, after all, a loose cannon; his violent acts – and worse, his failures – too high profile to be of use to the organization. To this end, a trio of assassins are sent to his home by IRA operative, Jimmy Rearden (Jonathan Ryan), and are as easily dispatched by O’Donnell, who also sets up Rearden with his girlfriend, Annette (Polly Walker), posing as a prostitute. After stripping Rearden down to his unmentionables, Annette assassinates him before rejoining her lover for their getaway. 

While being transferred to HM Prison Albany on the Isle of Wight, Sean’s escort convoy is ambushed by O'Donnell. Sean ruthlessly executes Inspector Highland (David Threlfall) and the remaining police officers. Next, Sean, Rearden and his cohorts leave for North Africa, plotting yet another kidnapping of Lord Holmes. Instead, Sean deviates to pursue a murder plot against Ryan and his family, accompanied by several of Rearden’s point men. A first attempt on Ryan’s life is made just outside the U.S. Naval Academy where Ryan is lecturing. Meanwhile, Catherine and Sally are harmed during a highway ambush by some of Sean’s men. Disturbed by this attack against his family, and determined it will not happen again, Ryan rejoins the CIA, something he vowed never again to do, even at the behest of his mentor and friend, Vice Admiral James Greer (James Earl Jones). Examining the data, Ryan believes Sean has taken refuge in a Libyan training camp. A Special Air Service team is deployed to eliminate their base of operations. One problem: Sean and his companions are not there. 

As Lord Holmes has decided to pay a formal visit on the Ryans – a photo-op to present Jack with his honorary knighthood from the Queen, the stage is set for a showdown between Jack and Sean at the Ryans’ isolated coastal farmhouse in Maryland. Sean’s attack strategy quickly dispatches with all of the assigned DSS agents and state troopers guarding the residence.  Mercifully, Sean has once again underestimated Ryan, who successfully hides Holmes while skillfully luring Sean away from the target. While the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team scurry to pick up Holmes, Ryan develops a ruse – leaving his family and Holmes behind and going rogue on a boat, speeding away from the coastline on the eve of a violent storm.  Sean, Annette and O’Donnell hunt down Ryan’s vessel. However, upon realizing they have been duped, Annette and O’Donnell try and talk some sense into Sean. Cruelly, he butchers them both, making his final pitch to murder Ryan in cold blood.  Sean attacks, but in the resulting struggle is impaled by Ryan on a ship’s anchor.

Patriot Games’ resounding box office success guaranteed more Tom Clancy novels in the creative hopper; Paramount producers, Mace Neufeld and Robert Rehme reuniting with Phillip Noyce, screenwriter, Donald E. Stewart and co-stars, Harrison Ford, Anne Archer, Thora Birch and James Earl Jones for Clear and Present Danger (1994); arguably, the best so far in the Jack Ryan franchise. Weighing in at a hefty 141 minutes and budgeted at $62 million, Clear and Present Danger antes up the espionage stakes, on occasion, veering dangerously into James Bond territory with its affinity for rocket launchers and high-tech missiles. However, the story is mercilessly grounded in Clancy’s grittier, dark edge, with writer/director, John Milius and screenwriter, Steven Zaillian contributing to its narrative heft. Not all critics were impressed, ReelViews’ James Berardinelli suggesting too much plot had been layered onto featherweight characters, more cardboard cutout than carefully drawn, with Harrison Ford’s Ryan a “disgustingly virtuous” “Superman without his cape.” In reality, Ford’s everyman has weathered this critique and the substantial machinations of the involved plot extremely well. There is a reason we call actors of Ford’s ilk ‘stars’, chiefly as Ford’s built-in presence precedes anything he might have otherwise achieved in this densely packed and slickly packaged thriller.

Better still, the so-called ‘cardboard cutouts’ are drawn from a gallery of incredibly gifted and subtly nuanced actors who do not need to go all that far to find both quality and truth in their performance: Willem Dafoe (as mercenary John Clark), Joaquim de Almeida (a superbly superficial leader of a Columbian drug cartel, Col. Félix Cortez), Miguel Sandoval (devious, yet brutal, as Ernesto Escobedo), Henry Czerny (spookily unscrupulous, Bob Ritter), Donald Moffat (an embittered and curiously emasculated President Bennett), Benjamin Bratt (butch recruiter, Cpt. Ramírez), Raymond Cruz (cunning black-ops sniper, Domingo Chavez) and Ann Magnuson (as ill-fated Moira Wolfson). Best of all, Terrance Marsh’s production design and James Horner’s flag-waving overtures add the prerequisite ‘yahoo’ quality to the penultimate ambush and rescue of the captured Sandoval and Ramirez. Clear and Present Danger is a heart-palpitating thriller with few equals; the intensity in its complicated and ever-unraveling narrative never muddying the clarity in Noyce’s visual storytelling.

We begin with a U.S. Coast Guard patrol boat trying to contact the captain of a private yacht, ‘Enchanter’, sailing into uncharted waters and much too far from its home port in Mobile. The Guard makes a gruesome discovery inside the ship’s blood-soaked state rooms; virtually all aboard have been murdered by two drug couriers, their bodies thrown overboard. We quickly learn the yacht belonged to an international businessman who also happens to be a close personal friend of the presiding U.S. President Bennett. Assigned to analyze the evidence, Jack Ryan deduces the President’s friend was, in fact, a front for Columbian drug smugglers and a cartel from whom he stole roughly $650 million. Bennett is flabbergasted. On Ryan’s advice, Bennett fields questions from the press in support of the friendship he shared with the dead man, thus diffusing the press having another field day with a White House scandal. Bennett also launches a counteroffensive against the cartel representing ‘a clear and present danger’ to the United States. At this juncture, Vice Admiral Jim Greer is stricken with terminal pancreatic cancer. Greer appoints Ryan as his acting Deputy Director and encourages him to go before a Congressional committee requesting funds for an ongoing CIA operation in Colombia.

Determined to keep Ryan in the dark, James Cutter (Harris Yulin) turns to the CIA's Deputy Director for Operations, Bob Ritter for a little smoke and mirrors. Together, this pair drafts an official-looking document to give them permission to wage a private war against the cartel. Ritter orders Clark to assemble a black-ops team with the help of John Clark. Capt. Ricardo Ramirez is hired to lead a highly skilled ground force on a perilous search-and-destroy mission in Columbia. Little by little, this team begins to dismantle Ernesto Escobedo’s well-oiled underground operations. Increasingly, Escobedo is displeased by this escalating cost of doing business, and even more short-tempered with his henchman, Félix Cortez for allowing the mysterious carnage of his vast, if illegal empire to continue at a staggering loss of $650 million. Befriending FBI Director Emil Jacobs’ (Tom Tammi) private secretary, Moira Wolfson, Cortez learns Jacobs is planning a trip to Columbia to negotiate terms for some frozen assets with the Attorney General.  Enterprisingly, Cortez realizes he can kill two birds with one stone - literally: framing Escobedo for Jacobs’ assassination, and that of his entourage, also to include none other than Jack Ryan.

As Cortez conspires with Cutter to assassinate Escobedo and take over his cartel, Cutter in tandem agrees to turn a blind eye to Cortez as he systematically hunts down Clark’s mercenaries. In Washington, Ryan gets wind of the whole nasty affair and tries desperately to hack into Cutter’s computer to get badly needed evidence to prove his theory. He is stifled by Cutter’s stealth in covering up the truth.  Meanwhile, Catherine informs her husband the body of her friend, Moira Wolfson was discovered in a remote cabin. Ryan pieces together the clues and identifies Cortez as the assassin. As negotiations reach a critical impasse, Greer quietly dies in hospital. Ever-loyal to his mentor and the United States, Ryan elects to defy Cutter by confronting the President with the truth. As yet, Ryan is quite unaware how far up the proverbial food chain this insidious game of cloak and dagger goes. Returning to Columbia, Ryan locates Clark. Unaware, Clark has been fed a lie by Cutter about Ryan, the two men meet in a rather violent exchange that ends only after Ryan lays all his cards on the table. Clark realizes it is Cutter, not Ryan, who is his enemy. As all Clark’s men have been ambushed in the jungle by Escobedo’s men, with only Ramirez and Chavez survived this bloody coup, and, currently, held by Cortez in a dungeon, Ryan leads a daring assault on the compound, with Clark in tow.

Ryan unexpectedly turns up at Escobedo’s walled-in compound and convinces him of Cortez’s complicity to overthrow his regime. Escobedo confronts and accuses Cortez of treachery. Alas, Escobedo has underestimated his adversary. In short order, he dies at Cortez’s hand; Ryan, spared a similar fate as Chávez’s sniper fire is quick to alleviate the threat.  Ryan, Clark and Chávez kill Cortez and stage a daring escape from the compound. Returning to America, much wiser for his part in this shadowy affair, Ryan confronts President Bennett, accusing him of complicity in a perilous cover-up. Ryan makes his intentions known to Bennett. He will testify against the President in front of the Congressional Oversight Committee, in spite of the irreparable damage it could do to his own career. Bennett tempts Ryan with a plan for advancement within the CIA. But Ryan, ever the Boy Scout, refuses to partake of the deceit any longer. Marching confidently from the Oval Office, Ryan passes Cutter in the hallway, refusing to speak to him. In the final moments, we see Ryan preparing to make his formal testimony before Congress.

Worldwide, Clear and Present Danger was a mega-hit for Paramount, grossing $215,887,717 and elevating the popularity of Tom Clancy’s authorship to near mythical levels. Fans who had been on board with Clancy since his debut as an author were now overwhelmed by a legion of new joiners, escalating his reputation as a bona fide rainmaker in the picture biz. That it took nearly 8 years to bring Clancy’s sequel, The Sum of All Fears (2002) to the screen was therefore something of a mystery; time enough for the screen’s most ideal and genuine incarnation of Jack Ryan - Harrison Ford - to have passed his box office prime; the part unconvincingly recast with the younger Ben Affleck, who never quite embodies it with the authority or authenticity Ford effortlessly possessed in spades. After Clear and Present Danger, Mace Neufeld spent nearly a year in development on Clancy’s The Cardinal of the Kremlin, first published in 1988 and a direct sequel to The Hunt for Red October. The project was eventually scrapped due to the logistics of its complex plot, Neufeld then going after The Sum of All Fears as his valiant successor. As late as 1999, Harrison Ford was still the ‘odds on’ favorite for a hat trick reprise of Jack Ryan on the big screen. But then the writing process hit a snag as Akiva Goldsman grappled with multiple drafts of a story increasingly outgrowing its use. Displeased with the process, Ford officially bowed out from the project in 2000; Affleck, signing a $10 million sweetheart’s deal to reboot the franchise by depicting Ryan in his earlier years. In hindsight, it is perhaps all too easy to see how the project would stumble a peg or two down from the two previous efforts starring Ford; director, Phillip Noyce also replaced with Phil Alden Robinson.

A film franchise requires continuity to succeed – ideally, both in front of, and behind, the camera. As example: for the last 50+ years the James Bond legacy has been fed by the Broccoli family bloodline with other creative alumni, most notedly screenwriter/producer Michael Wilson, following in these time-honored footsteps to keep Bond alive through the many actors who have thus far played Britain’s most aimable super spy. Alas, Jack Ryan has not been so blessed; McTiernan’s false start repaired by having Harrison Ford and Phillip Noyce in symbiosis on back-to-back mega hits. Deprived of either these creative forces, The Sum of All Fears cannot help but suffer and, predictably, it does. For his part, Clancy would laughingly refer to himself as the author of a book Phil Alden Robinson ignored. And, while Noyce’s creative license had irked Clancy during the making of both Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger, the results in both cases arguably made for engrossing adaptations. However, in The Sum of All Fears’ case, the outcome of such creative tinkering has instead to blunted the impact of the novelization that preceded it. Owing to a two-year lobbying campaign by the group Council on American-Islamic Relations, against using ‘Muslim villains’ in movies, the threat in The Sum of All Fears was altered from Muslim nationalists to undisclosed neo-fascists; a decision that in hindsight, uncannily foreshadows the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.  Since, screenwriter, Dan Pyne has speculated the decision was made quite simply because Muslim terrorists had become something of a pop cliché in the movies.

The Sum of All Fears further distances itself from – then – current events by setting the plot into motion in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War where an Israeli A-4 Skyhawk jet with nuclear weapons is shot down. Fast forward 29 years ahead, a Syrian scrap dealer unearths the large un-exploded projectile from a vacant field in Golan Heights. From here, the ownership of the bomb follows a crooked path; first, sold to Olson (Colm Feore), a South African arms trafficker, and then, Austrian billionaire/neo-Nazi, Richard Dressler (Alan Bates); the latter, hell bent on launching a war between the United States and Russia. The tired ole dream of world domination alive and well, Dressler believes that by decimating both super powers he will leave a united fascist Europe rife for a takeover.  Enter, Jack Ryan (Affleck) at the behest of CIA Director William Cabot (Morgan Freeman) as a liaise on his meeting with Russian President Nemerov (Ciarán Hinds). While in Moscow, Cabot and Ryan tour a Russian nuclear weapons facility as prescribed by the START treaty. Only Ryan becomes acutely aware three of its top scientists listed are nowhere to be found. Intrigued, Cabot orders operative John Clark (Liev Schreiber) to investigate; the missing scientists traced to an undercover facility in the Ukraine. Now, Cabot begins to suspect the Russians are secretly building up their arsenal.  

Ryan deduces that a mysterious crate, likely containing a bomb, was sent to Baltimore via a cargo ship in anticipation of the U.S. President’s appearance at the ball game. Forewarning Cabot of this looming disaster, the President is evacuated before the bomb detonates. Alas, the city is decimated and Cabot is killed. Escalating the crisis, a rogue agent in the Russian Air Force has been paid by Dressler to attack the USS John C. Stennis in the North Sea. Again, Ryan discovers crucial evidence about the bomb’s isotopic signature to suggest its likely manufacture was a facility in South Carolina in 1968. Meanwhile, in Syria, Clark tracks down Ghazi (Nabil Elouahabi), one of the men who discovered the bomb and now is dying from radiation poisoning. Ghazi confesses he sold the weapon to Olson. Hacking into Olson's computer, Ryan’s colleagues download files that implicate Dressler in the Baltimore attack. Exposing the truth, Ryan now convinces Presidents Nemerov and Fowler to jointly stand down as a pledge of mutual good faith. The real conspirators, including Dressler, are assassinated as Fowler and Nemerov announce new measures to counter nuclear proliferation. From the wings, Ryan and his fiancée, Dr. Catherine Muller (Bridget Moynahan) take in the inspiring speech.

The Sum of All Fears is not a terrible espionage thriller – just never a particularly engaging one. Despite the writers’ striving to relocate their story in a timeline prior to the events outlined in either Patriot Games or Clear and Present Danger, Harrison Ford’s absence looms large over these proceedings; big shoes, never entirely filled to anyone’s satisfaction by Ben Affleck assuming the role. Hollywood is infamous for casting younger men to play parts requiring more seasoned pros, and Affleck, despite his many years in the industry, cannot carry Ford’s torch – not even with the advantage of portraying Ryan as a younger man in his younger years and therefore a novice. Like Alec Baldwin before him, we can sense Affleck’s awkwardness as he repeatedly grasps, though never seizes the brass ring with confidence. The rest of the cast do their best in support of Affleck. But Jack Ryan is a role that must be carried as a ‘full load’ by every actor who inhabits it. Even with its flawed casting, The Sum of All Fears easily bests Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014) – for now, the latest attempt by Paramount to resurrect a franchise that, arguably, has run its course. As early as 2008, Paramount planned to keep the series going. For one reason or another this never happened, delays allowing public interest to cool – arguably, beyond the point of no return.

While The Sum of All Fears did respectable box office, its success did not immediately cause Paramount to order up a sequel. In hindsight, it appears as though the creative team assigned the project were somehow incapable of ironing out the wrinkles in either their plans or casting choices until early 2012. Shadow Recruit is equally plagued by the casting of Chris Pine – the most ineffectual and pubescent of Jack Ryans we have yet seen. Can Hollywood just go back to churning out leading men again who actually look like men – not college bound twenty-somethings with too much churlish cynicism for their own good?!? But I digress. Grossing a pallid $135.6 million, Shadow Recruit is a mostly feeble, if sleek reboot. Director Kenneth Branagh and screenwriters Adam Cozad and David Koepp have grave difficulty getting their albatross to spread its creative wings. When the plot finally does become buoyant it only occasionally is sustainable. The most laughable moment has to be Ryan’s confrontation with Viktor Cherevin (Kenneth Branagh casting himself as the heavy): the diminutive Pine pitted against Branagh’s formidable girth – both physical and, moreover, as a thespian who can act rings around this pop star du jour. While one can argue ‘sheer stealth’ over ‘brawn’ at play, the level of engagement between Ryan and Cherevin is fraught with incongruities that render it more wish-fulfillment than credible.  More than anything else, Shadow Recruit takes on the visual styling of a badly bruised Jason Bourne knock-off; lacking in everything it otherwise has not borrowed from another well-heeled and even more well-oiled espionage thriller.

The project had an awkward gestation. Director Sam Raimi bowed out due to commitments on Spider-Man after only a few weeks. The project was shelved. But a year later, Paramount was back at it, this time with co-financier, Skydance Productions endeavoring to secure Chris Pine for the title role. A departure from the franchise, Shadow Recruit would not be based on a Tom Clancy novel – instead, borrowing inspiration and outright pilfering characters created by Clancy. For a brief wrinkle in time, producers Mace Neufeld and Lorenzo di Bonaventura were invigorated by Hossein Amini’s screenplay. By 2010, Shadow Recruit (as yet to be named such) had a new director - Jack Bender – and a new screenplay from Adam Cozad. Over the next several months writers, Anthony Peckham and Steve Zaillian would be brought in to tighten up the narrative; Zaillian, withdrawing altogether, citing creative differences. The project was then put on hold yet again to wait for Pine to wrap up shooting Star Trek Into Darkness, while writer David Koepp came on board for yet another rewrite. 2012 saw another creative hiccup: Bender – out – and Branagh in, the production picking up necessary steam to finally get underway.

The timeline for Shadow Recruit is a little wonky as it presents audiences with a much younger Jack Ryan, presumably beginning his career anew after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Ryan, now studying at London’s prestigious School of Economics, enlists in the Marines as a second lieutenant, suffering a horrific spinal injury after his helicopter is shot down in Afghanistan. During his lengthy rehabilitation, he attracts Cathy Muller (Knightley), a medical student who helps him walk again. Ryan is also of special interest to CIA operative, Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner), who recruits him. Fast track twelve years into the future and Ryan is now working covertly for the CIA on Wall Street, tracing suspicious transactions linked to terrorist activity. Noticing the markets do not respond in the expected way after the Russian Federation loses its crucial vote in the UN assembly, Ryan quickly unearths the inexplicable disappearance of billions of dollars held by Russian organizations controlled by Viktor Cherevin. As Ryan's employer conducts business with Cherevin, the curious inaccessibility of certain accounts affords Ryan the opportunity to visit Moscow for an official audit. Narrowly escaping an attempt on his life by the assassin, Embee Deng (Nonso Anozie) Ryan contacts Harper, informing him how Cherevin's shadowy international investments make the United States vulnerable to complete financial collapse.

However, Cherevin expediently informs Ryan the company and all of its assets have only just been liquidated, thus preventing any audit. Meanwhile, Cathy, presently Ryan's fiancée (Really?!?! Twelve years of courtship?!?) flies to Moscow, suspecting he is having an affair.  Breaking protocol, Ryan reveals to Cathy he works for the CIA. Unhappy with this most recent turn of events, but determined to make the best of a thoroughly awkward situation, Harper involves Cathy in his plans to infiltrate Cherevin's offices. (Again, taking a total novice with zero CIA training and tossing her into the thick of things…really?!?!? How hard up is America’s Intelligence community?!?!).  Ryan and Cathy meet Cherevin at an upscale restaurant, Ryan staging ‘a scene’ and walking out, leaving Cathy to keep Cherevin occupied while he skulks off to Cherevin’s office and downloads a series of files proving his theory of corruption. Ryan learns Cherevin has falsified a death certificate to place his son, Aleksandr Borovsky (Alec Utgoff), in the U.S. as a sleeper agent impersonating a police officer. The cruiser he is driving is loaded with the bomb. Realizing Aleksandr's target is Wall Street, Ryan gives chase, catches up and engages Alek in a physical confrontation, crashing the cruiser into the East River while simultaneously escaping unharmed. The bomb detonates underwater and Alek is killed. In Moscow, Cherevin is executed by his co-conspirators, leaving Ryan and Harper to attend the President at the White House for the official debriefing.  

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is a flimsy and disposable entertainment; its inspiration, weak at best; its characterizations, weaker still. The picture greatly benefits from Haris Zambarloukos’ stylish – if frenetic - cinematography, as well as Patrick Doyle’s bombastic score, both utterly wasted on a movie that is as forgettable as it proved disappointing both artistically and financially.  Since Tom Clancy’s death in 2013, the bastardization of his fictional alter ego has continued, most recently, making the reverse leap to the small screen in a series that has yet to find its true calling with an audience. Will Jack Ryan return to movie screens anytime soon? Unlikely, as Paramount seems disinterested in either rebooting or retrofitting any of Clancy’s other novels with yet another actor likely always to stand in the shadow of Harrison Ford – now, regrettably, very much out of the running to contribute more than fond recollections from the past when the franchise had seen better days.

Paramount Home Video has remastered, repackaged and re-released all five of the movies based on Tom Clancy’s characters in a succinctly packaged 4K Blu-ray set, at present, exclusively sold in the U.S. The Jack Ryan Collection brings The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, The Sum of All Fears and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit together in ultra hi-def for the very first time. Aside: we also get copies on regular Blu-ray. The results, while impressive, may not be to everyone’s liking. There is, in fact, an expectation in 4K remastering, that it will somehow breath ‘new life’ into vintage movies with HDR-10 and DolbyVision color grading meant to make everything as vibrant as a Sony demo disc at your local Best Buy. T’aint necessarily so, folks – particularly when the actual photography being remastered in hi-def is hardly tweaked to satisfy these artificially inflated expectations. The first 3 films in the Jack Ryan franchise were shot on 35mm Panavision with a deliberately desaturated color palette; cinematographer, Donald McAlpine (who photographed both Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger) likely taking his cue from the aesthetic dark and stylized work achieved by Jan de Bont in the first film: The Hunt for Red October.

The technical restraints inherent in each production – movies shot and finished on celluloid before the (dis)advantage of CGI – coupled with shortcomings built into Panavision anamorphic lenses, results in an overall image quality that, while indigenous to its source, lacks the pristine pop and zing some will anticipate from a 4K presentation. Rest assured, these movies have all been given new scans. And appearing less than perfect is, in fact, all to the good, as the newly remastered high dynamic color grading, offered in both HDR10 and DolbyVision, reveals the purity of its source materials – stylized softness and ever-so-subtle augmentation of naturalistically lit sets with noticeable improvements to fine detail, grain structure, and, of course, surface textures. Close-ups achieve startling clarity, every pore and hair follicle ‘clear and present’. HDR has also enriched the darkest sequences while brightening virtually all of the highlights. The last 2 movies in the franchise – The Sum of All Fears, and, Shadow Recruit, were made after the advantages of digital technology and, predictably, sport a distinctly crisper and more colorful palette, realistically represented in 4K with vastly richer, deeper, bolder colors. Paramount has left well enough alone, offering us the same lossless 5.1 Dolby TrueHD audio directly ported over from the previously released standard Blu-rays. As with most 4K upgrades, extras are confined to an accompany audio commentary previously made available on Blu-ray. All other extras are contained on the standard Blu-rays only. To have all 5 Jack Ryan movies in 4K is a blessing in disguise, as only the first three are truly memorable. Still, we champion Paramount for remaining true to releasing franchises in their entirety in 4K. With this debut, and the earlier releases of all the Mission Impossible movies, could a 4K set of the Indiana Jones franchise be far behind? We sincerely hope not. Bottom line: highly recommended.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

The Hunt for Red October – 3.5

Patriot Games – 4.5

Clear and Present Danger – 5+

The Sum of All Fears - 3

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit – 2.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

Overall – 4.5

EXTRAS

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