A debate exists among spy thriller fans and action film aficionados alike over who the American James Bond is. Jason Bourne is often labelled as the most direct comparison because both are the rough and tumble, well-trained, high kill count types. But I place my bet on Jack Ryan as the true American spy, who, if not the best of all America has to offer, is certainly symbolic of the nation’s best aspirations. Nearly as many people have played Jack Ryan at this point (five, including the newest, John Krasinski) as Bond (seven), but none of them have managed to capture the feel of the original literary iteration as Krasinski in the newest offering from Amazon, “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan.
I’ve always considered Tom Clancy’s novels to be a bit of a guilty pleasure read. They’re a little harder to get through now that I’m older and more experienced. When I was younger I read right past the Ronald Reagan superhero overtones of Ryan, his blithe disregard for genuinely held beliefs that differ from his own, his lack of class awareness, and his almost criminal naivete. This was likely in part because when I was younger I believed his aspirational do-gooderness was possible, and because like the novel version, I wanted to get my PhD in history and maybe even work for the CIA someday. I also revelled in the unnecessary but impressive amount of technical detail of military hardware and procedure. Anyone reading these books could be forgiven for thinking the United States military is unbeatable due to is superior training and technology. We know a little better, today.
In the newest version of the character, Krasinski plays a younger Jack Ryan. Still single, a lowly analyst working for the CIA with a doctorate in Economics rather than History, as in the novels. They hint at his history on Wall Street, but suggest he left the private sector to make a difference in the world. Despite this change, the show is remarkably close to the novel version of Ryan in general. Almost all of his personal background is the same, only slightly updated for modern times. This dodges a major pet peeve of mine, which is when television and movies change all the small details of a character that make them real for no identifiable reason at all. Clearly, the showrunners here respect the character too much to make frivolous changes. Krasinski plays Ryan as a somewhat damaged individual, suffering from the effects of PTSD owing to his service in Afghanistan, who carries a lot of demons with him. But what sells an otherwise fairly stock archetype more than the character (in the modern era) deserves is Krasinski himself. When I wrote about his recent film, A Quiet Place, I talked about how Krasinski face acts better than almost anyone in Hollywood, and it’s on full display here. He’s just so likeable. He has an easy smile that reminds us all why we liked Jim on The Office so much, and a face of pain and hurt so emotive it reaches into my chest and crushes something into a tiny ball.
The plot, while a little more thoughtful and clever than the standard issue terrorist bad guy action story, does not re-invent a stale genre. They get credit for at least spending a significant amount of time with the villains to show they are real people with real motivations. Despite some criticism for portraying Jack as the white, male savior to a family of brown people, I think it does an excellent job showing Hanin – the wife of the main terrorist who flees her husband in an attempt to get their children to safety – as a strong, proud, badass woman. She risks everything, including rape and death, in a country that is not at all forgiving to women like her, to rescue her own kids. She’s every bit the hero that Jack is, and I’m surprised more critics aren’t giving her credit for that. Dina Shihabi, who plays Hanin, does an outstanding job of portraying the brave woman and her struggles.
Ryan’s chief professional counterpart is Wendell Pierce’s Jim Greer. In the novel he’s a late aged former navy admiral who is director of intelligence at the CIA. He takes on Ryan as his successor and protégé to bring him along and mold him. Greer also plays the role of surrogate father in the novels. TV Greer is a little rougher around the edges. He’s a little younger, fresh off being blacklisted in disgrace from foreign assignments for unknown reasons, he’s re-assigned to lead Jack’s team. This is Greer’s last shot, and he’s got just as much to prove as Jack does. Fortunately, he sees something in Jack, just like book Greer does, and he decides to hitch his wagon to Jack’s horse, linking the two together for better or worse.
If it has a fault, I think it strays too far from the book on Ryan’s time in the field. Book Ryan does his fair share of action scenes over his many books, but largely makes an impact from the office; by seeing things others don’t see, by enforcing an unimpeachable moral code, and through his dogged, sometimes self-destructive work ethic. TV Jack Ryan, young, more recently familiar with his firearms training, rushes into the field almost every episode to shoot at terrorists. Terrorists on the streets, terrorists in the mountains, terrorists in the desert, terrorists on the beaches, and terrorists in subways. This Jack Ryan has shot at them in most every imaginable setting. While the show does do a good job at showing he’s smart, and makes those intuitive leaps, I think they made a mistake giving him so much field time. But, I can see why they did. Jack sitting around looking at manila envelopes full of data probably isn’t as exciting. At this point in American society, it might be nice to have a hero that sits behind a desk rather than one who shoots from the hip. With the current state of things, I’m more comfortable with people looking for political salvation from within rather than military salvation from the outside.
Clancy made up for Ryan’s largely deskbound exploits by weaving in interesting stories from other characters, and through this complex tapestry of seemingly unconnected plots, would often crash them together with satisfying results. I think the show struggles a bit more here. In the books, Cathy Muller (Abbie Cornish) is Ryan’s highly skilled ophthalmologist wife. Here she is dating him for the first time, and is an epidemiologist, which is necessary because it’s the only way you can shoehorn her into the show as anything other than his girlfriend, there for dates nights and other scenes where she exists only to serve as a sounding board for Ryan’s character development. They pull this off rather well, for Cathy indeed holds her own and Cornish can command a scene as well as anyone. But it did feel a bit contrived, and I’m not sure they can pull it off again next season. I think we need more scenes of her at work or in her personal life away from Jack, as she comes off rather aloof and disengaged when juxtaposed against him. Another subplot involving a drone pilot seemed like it would be more connected to the primary story, but ended up merely being an odd aside that had nothing to do with the main plot, and that thread was lost entirely part way through the season. Given how rushed the series felt, I think that plot line could have been erased entirely. It felt crammed in only to show the emotional toll that drone pilots suffer from killing hundreds from the safety of a Las Vegas air base. Or perhaps it was a nod and a wink to the liberals who might otherwise hammer the show as being overly patriotic without applying critical thought (or just being critical) towards the US military. If their goal was to throw red meat to liberals, they were far better off doing so with the more subtle dialogue between Jack and French intelligence officer Sandrine Arnauld (Marie-Josee Croze) where they discuss the finer points of cultural differences that make immigrant life harder in France than in America, as well as the dangerous radicalizing effects prison can have on warping the minds of the disaffected. I found this a much more powerful and tightly plotted way of shoehorning in commentary than the ham-handed attempt with the drone pilot.
Based on the casting news for the already filming second season, it sounds like they might add fan-favorite character John Clark. Clark is a no-nonsense general badass with a heart of gold in the books, and his presence was sorely needed. Having Ryan fill in for these scenes took something away from the story. The story could also use a little diversity, so adding in Domingo Chavez as Clark’s assistant, maybe by making next season a re-do of Clear and Present Danger, would add a nice balance to the series.
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan isn’t re-inventing the wheel or breaking ground on a revolution in art forms here. You pretty much know what you’re getting with this show by the end of the first episode. But it’s very good and a surprisingly faithful adaptation of the source material. Krasinski, with significant assists from Pierce, Cornish, Shihabi and others, bring to life a Jack Ryan story Tom Clancy would have been proud to watch. As a longtime fan, I couldn’t really have asked for more.
