Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)

Chris Pine does a really good job, brings his A-Game. Keira Knightley, well, OK, she is pretty under-rated and ALWAYS seems to bring her A-Game even to the worst possible movies.... and she brought her A-Game again. And Kevin Costner, well he can be off the mark every now and again, but he seemed to try his best to make this movie good. And that is why it's watchable. Pine, Knightley, and Costner all bring their best games to this film and do their absolute best to make Shadow Recruit a good movie.... .... and this is despite the HORRIBLE SCRIPT and mostly incompetent direction. Branagh has always been a better actor than he ever was a director, and when it comes to a movie that needs to be taunt and stressful.... they needed someone else. But then, they also needed a script that could build tension and a director that can work with it, not just do the same trick he failed to execute properly with Frankenstein. So what you have here are three actors conspiring to save a movie... and unfortunately you need more than three actors doing their absolute best to save a film from a poor script and a poor director.

Chris Pine takes on the mantle of the eponymous US intelligence officer who survives an helicopter crash in the Mediterranean Sea only to be recruited by "Harper" (Kevin Costner) into the community at Langley where he is to investigate dodgy financial activities. It's this task that alerts him to the dubious antics of "Cherevin" (Kenneth Branagh) who seems to be mis-declaring his accounts and syphoning off large sums. Why? Well the conspiracy theorists readily believe his suggestion that this is all part of a not very cunning plan to destabilise the dollar and bankrupt his United States. "Ryan" is to be sent to Moscow but that poses two problems. He's just an analyst and reluctant to take to the field, and his rather possessive girlfriend "Cathy" (Keira Knightley) suspects that he's at it! Anyway, off he goes into the lion's den and before he can get to the bottom of things, she makes an annoying surprise visit and soon both are on the hit list of the nasty Russian and his seemingly inexhaustible army of goons who couldn't hit the Kremlin with an Howitzer. Pine does fine here and despite his thick accent, so does Branagh - but Costner is pretty flat and Knightley is just plain terrible. She manages to create a character that just irritates from start to finish as the rest of the story lurches from one far-fetched scenario to another. The denouement is quickly paced but messy and somehow I felt disappointed by the sheer simplicity and sloppily procedural nature of the whole thing. Adequate, but not a patch on the Harrison Ford outings.