Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

Judging by this fifth outing Jack Ryan is a dull character, which probably explains why attempts to build a franchise around him have failed (Chris Pine here is the fourth actor to play him).   The first half hour is so generic and forgettable that indeed I had seen this film before and forgotten the early scenes where we meet three of the four main characters: Jack himself, a marine recovering from a serious war injury, Cathy (Keira Knightley) a British trainee doctor, and Harper (Kevin Costner) a CIA high-up  who recruits Jack. Jack is so boring that the best use for him that the CIA can find is to put him in a bank on the off-chance he might learn something to the CIA's advantage. Fast forward 10 years (!) and Jack is in New York still hoping his stint in the bank will pay off. And guess what?  He discovers some suspicious financial trades pointing to a Russian bank, and off to Moscow he is sent.   One small problem is that Cathy is now his fiancée but h...

I love a good submarine film, so once I got past Sean Connery as a Soviet submarine commander (Marko Ramius) with a Scottish accent I was swept along happily enough by this adaptation of a Tom Clancy bestseller, his debut novel.  It  helps that it has a strong cast, headed up by Alec Baldwin (the first of several actors to get to play Jack Ryan), and that it was directed by John McTiernan, two years after 'Die Hard', who once again demonstrates his ability to build dramatic tension and to handle action scenes. The plot centres on Connery going rogue with a new stealth submarine (named  Red October ), and for a while it is an open question whether he is a madman trying to start World War 3 or a defector.  It soon becomes clear, to Ryan at least, that it is the latter. Of course, if he was a madman then we would have a film more akin to the superior 'Crimson Tide' released five years later.  Which is not to downplay the  considerable virtues of this outing, w...