Jack Ryan: Ghost War

With Father’s Day fast approaching, dad-friendly content is suddenly filling our screens. In the coming weeks, get ready for an onslaught of action movies, World War II documentaries and _Top Gear_knock-offs. Sure enough, right on time, Jack Ryan — the CIA analyst-turned-super-spy originated by Tom Clancy in his bestselling novels, and Hero To All Dads – is back. Having served four workmanlike seasons on Prime Video, John Krasinski returns to the role for Jack Ryan: Ghost War, his first feature-length outing and the first for the character since 2014’s largely forgettable (and similarly vaguely titled) Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.

Krasinski is now by far the longest-serving steward of a character whose sensible-spook suit has previously been filled by the likes of Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck and Chris Pine. He seems as comfortable as he did with Jim in The Office, playing him with dependably steady competence, quiet calm and a dash of natural amiability. But Ghost War feels like the weakest entry in his series, a franchise now seemingly running on fumes.

At the end of the last season, Jack had resigned his post as Deputy Director of the CIA and was attempting to live a life outside the spy game. When we rejoin him, he’s back behind a desk, applying his considerable brain to the private sector. Naturally, his ol’ pal James Greer (Wendell Pierce), the agency’s new Deputy Director, decides to pull him back in for One Last Job, recruiting him as a freelancer for a meeting with a contact in Dubai. (The reason why it simply had to be Jack Ryan, and not any one of the many CIA agents still at the agency, amounts to simply: well, the film is called ‘Jack Ryan’.)

Naturally, the Dubai meeting does not go to plan and soon Jack is forced to contend with the mysterious Liam Crown (Max Beesley), a snarling Northerner in the Ed-Harris-in-The-Rock villain template: a disgruntled decorated military vet who turns to terrorism to make his point. Except, it’s not entirely clear what his point is, beyond nebulous statements about “sending a message”. This is one of those films with a plot both needlessly convoluted and actually quite stupid, if you think about it too much.

So opaque and exposition-heavy is the script, in fact, that there is practically no room for any character beats. Jack gets a cursory, “I just want a normal life!” moment. Sienna Miller earns a thankless role as an MI6 agent whose one and only personality trait is to chain-smoke cigarettes. Michael Kelly’s Mike November is relegated to weak comic-relief duties. (The most unintentionally funny part of the film is that there is a pivotal, frequently referenced character called Nigel; with the greatest of respect to all Nigels, that is not a name that belongs in an action film.)

To its credit, the film attempts to place the plot within a political context, the villain positioned as a product of the post-9/11 War On Terror and its ugly ramifications. But the overall politics feel wobbly at best; Clancy was obviously as hawkish as they come, but talk of American ideals and “national pride” seems tone-deaf and somewhat outdated with the current situation in the United States. Instead, its most notable position seems to be accepting fairly brazen product-placement for Emirates Airlines and the UAE as a whole. (“Dubai is one the most technologically advanced cities in the world!” coos one character.)

At least the action is serviceable enough. The film’s high-point comes with a genuinely tense car-chase and shoot-out across central London; if you can look past the geographical crime of action moving from Greenwich to Westminster in seconds, it’ll raise the pulse here and there. Sadly, by the end, it devolves into thoughtless empty gunfire exchange, devoid of tension, excitement, or logic. It doesn’thelp that it rarely feels cinematic, with dull head-and-shoulders framing and flat TV lighting.

Ultimately, Ghost War is simply following a recent trend of TV shows-turned-films that look and feel almost exactly like the TV version — a generous runtime, and a bit of extra cash in the budget, sure, but essentially playing like an extended episode. (See also: Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, Karate Kid: Legends, The Mandalorian And Grogu). Dads deserve better