sebastianolbrich35 Watching this movie leaves me absolutely stunned how one can mess this up. You have a line of charismatic and first-class Hollywood actors and, given Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, a successful franchise which provides a lot of story and background. In short - all the ingredients for a successful reboot are there. Given his appearance in latest Star Trek, Chris Pine also proved himself as suitable candidate to do so. Unfortunately the creators messed the whole thing up by overloading the story: Within the first minutes Jack Ryan watches the WTC fall, participates in war on terror in Afghanistan, get insures, learns how to walk again, meets his future wife and get recruited by the CIA. To much? - hey, wait for the main plot and the other characters. Kevin Costner (introduced as recruiter of Jack Ryan) reappears again as main contact and a sniper (!) on a mission in Russia. Keira Knightleys character is rather schizophrenic as she turns from jealous girlfriend into an undercover agent and then into the understanding spouse. The main villain's (a Russian oligarch - thank for trying, Kenneth) motivation is the one of a dying true patriot wanting to leave a legacy to his family. That does not stop him from getting distracted by preferably married women and wasteful dinners. Anyway, the legacy part becomes particular disturbing as one learns that his only son lives the life of a sleeper on US soil since he was nine and is now destined to execute a suicide mission on his father's behalf. Next, I sense creative disagreement whether his is supposed to be a spy movie, a character study or an action movie. Maybe one should have briefed the director and cutter on that. In its current state it is unclear which scenes actually contribute to the plot. The relevance of the action sequences are trapped somewhere between 24 and Transformers. A pity...

juneebuggy This was pretty average as far as action movies go, nothing stand out. Chris Pine does a decent enough job, I always like him even in something as generic as this turned out to be. I also enjoy Keira Knightley but her role as the girlfriend/fiancé was flat and could have been played by anyone. Which sets the tone for this whole movie.Dubbed an "explosive thriller" (not so much) Shadow Recruit is another addition to the Jack Ryan-Tom Clancy franchise. This reboot follows Ryan as an ordinary executive, who is also secretly working for the CIA. One day while crunching data he discovers a Russian conspiracy that will destroy the U.S. economy and spark global chaos. He becomes the only man with the skills to stop it and soon finds himself in Russia, caught between his secretive handler, his clueless fiancé and a brilliant Russian leader.Kevin Costner was decent as the mentor once again giving a Liam Neeson take on his role, Kenneth Branagh was very good as the Russian bad guy and there are a couple of fun cameos from Mikhail Baryshnikov and Nonso Anozie.I also enjoyed the early set up scenes where we gain background into Ryan's character; as a student pre 911, a marine, and his time in the rehab hospital. The ending went far into OTT land, getting quite silly as Chris becomes a full operative, saves America from financial ruin and rescues his girlfriend. All in this wasn't terrible, a decent time waster its just generic.

johnnyzheng212 Okay, first of all, if you haven't seen this movie yet, don't. It sucks ass. The plot? There is none. Well, there is, but it is some generic James Bond plot. You know how it is. Good guy is on some kind of secret mission, goes through some problems, and brings down the bad guys. There is nothing original about this movie. It just borrowed stuff from every other secret agent movie. Not only that, it is a secret agent movie with none of the special effects. I swear to God, they must have spent 5 dollars making the movie. Don't watch it plz! It is that bad. The only good thing about this movie is that we get to see Keira Knightly but she's not even nude so what's the point. Seriously, don't see it. It is a waste of time, at least.

c-conley90 I know two faced in my review of this movie. On one had, it's rather dry as far as Jack Ryan movies go. Hell, it doesn't have a football stadium blowing up in it like Sum of All Fears. Chris Pine is good, Kevin Costner is excellent, Keira Knightley is playing sort of a damsel in distress at parts of this?!! OK, this kind of blindsides me after years of Pirates of the Caribbean movies where she could kick some person's ass if she wanted to. The director is the bad guy. Oh wait, sorry Spoilers! He's actually not bad as a sleazy Russian extremist terrorist. His end is however a letdown. The action scenes are great, but again the whole movie as a whole is a meh. I would watch it again, if I need a fast paced Spy Thriller to watch. I can see why this bombed and it never saw a sequel.