Review: Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

City Paper grade: D

The Cold War is long over and Tom Clancy is dead, but Jack Ryan has nonetheless been resurrected to battle glowering, vodka-swilling Russians intent on bringing America to its knees. In the character's fourth incarnation, Chris Pine steps lightly in the footsteps of Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck. He's believable enough as an out-of-his-element CIA agent in the now-requisite origin story, though he never makes enough of an impression to argue for why Ryan is any more iconic than the next dozen breezy, blue-eyed action heroes. Kenneth Branagh both directs and plays the lead villain; as an actor he effects a Russian accent and as a director effects a Paul Greengrass one, aping the agitated camera moves and blunt force editing style of the Bourne series. He has the special disorientation down but unfortunately lacks Greengrass' taut pacing. Despite Patrick Doyle's insistently throbbing score, which virtually demands that each moment is more hair-pullingly suspenseful than the last, no amount of blaring horns and shaking cameras can make the endless scenes of keyboard tapping intriguing, let alone pulse-quickening. The script (by Adam Cozad and David Koepp) is lazily plotted, positing a post-9/11 world where no one has ever seen a spy movie, employing tactics that audiences have seen a million times but which slip right by these espionage heavy-hitters. The story ends up relying less on its heroes' quick reflexes than their ability to speed-type and execute blazingly fast Internet searches. When the plot does come unglued from all those screens, it's merely to engage in another uninvolving car chase or to allow Branagh to announce his evil intentions in speeches that would have a Bond villain checking his watch