Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan type TV Show network Amazon Prime genre Thriller Tom Clancy’s bestselling books about CIA agent Jack Ryan wrought a whole industry. There was the oft-rebooted film series, variously starring Indiana Jones, Batman, Captain Kirk, and Jack Donaghy. There is the ongoing videogame franchise, offering meticulous fantasies of killfest imperialism. Taken all together, the Clancy pantheon comprises an insane universe brimming with nuclear terror and political hysteria. That describes a typical Tuesday in our own insane universe, so the time feels right for Amazon’s Jack Ryan, a compelling yet exasperating reboot debuting August 31. The four episodes I’ve seen try hard to capture the unwieldy realities of modern warfare. A mysterious powermonger named Suleiman (Ali Suliman) rises in Syria, buoyed by support from Sunni and Shia alike. His money trail alerts Jack Ryan (John Krasinski), a number cruncher working in some backwater Langley cubicle. The expansive storytelling finds room for fascinating supporting characters. Suleiman’s wife (Dina Shihabi) has a complicated agenda. Ryan’s boss James Greer (ever-wonderful Wendell Pierce) finds complex solace in his own Islamic practice. One surreal subplot focuses on a nondescript drone operator in Las Vegas. The sprawling focus feels purposeful, like creators Carlton Cuse and Graham Roland are working overtime to defeat the propagandistic instinct. This is the kind of show where the hero is the title, but it opens with a flashback focusing on a different character, spends lots of time with the nominal antagonist and his extended family. And Jack himself is presented, initially, as the opposite of a typical swaggery spy. “I’m an analyst!” he protests. “I don’t interrogate people, I write reports!” True, for like two seconds. When we meet Jack, he’s a noble computer guy, statgeeking the banality of evil from behind a desk. For a moment, Krasinski’s presence could be stuntcasting. He’s not a field agent. He works in, well, the Office. But Jack Ryan marks a new direction for Amazon’s original programming, an aesthetic best described with a CHA-CHING sound effect and a GIF of Heath Ledger’s Joker burning his money mountain. So there’s a big travel budget, one huge action setpiece per episode, a helicopter when you least expect it. Jack’s a brainy rookie, and he’s also a traumatized soldier: The Tinder dream of a sensitive brainiac with killer abs. His veteran status means he’s gun-ready. He also worked on Wall Street, so you know he’s a savvy investor: If Jack Ryan DC has a Slugline, Jack ranks high on their Eligible Bachelors lineup. And the show’s initial sensitivity dwindles in the face of jingoistic excess. Mysterious brown people kill innocent white people on the streets of Paris. In Syria, a Muslim character describes an American drone attack as an act of God. Moments like that make Jack Bauer look subtle. And I worry that some intention of this first season is to provide Jack Ryan with an origin story — which makes all the other character work feel extraneous, like all the citizens of this very globalized world are just thematic signposts on Jack’s journey to self-realization. Jack Ryan wants to acknowledge that mistakes have been made, grapple with confusing legacy of the CIA, the current troubled status of the American government. “I figure,” Jack explains, “It’s better to be on the inside, maybe be able to change something, than be on the outside and not be able to change anything.” Woke enough, humble bae. Yet you scan that statement for a deeper message: OUTSIDERS CHANGE NOTHING. The real horrors of the September 11 terrorist attacks gave TV fiction like 24 and Homeland a haunted mania, like even the heroes were driven mad with fear and rage. In Jack Ryan‘s premiere, though, the frequent references to that horrible day sounds grasping, self-important, blankly alarmist. Jack demands that his bosses pay attention to his theories: “Don’t you think there are people on this floor who would’ve loved this opportunity twenty years ago the first time they heard the name Bin Laden?” Suleiman is “like Bin Laden,” Jack insists. With one big difference. Suleiman is amassing millions of dollars for his plan. Whereas, as Jack tells us, “9/11 cost half a million dollars!” He’s trying to say that Suleiman’s attack could be much worse. And yet, what comes across in that line is a goofy arrogance, borderline snooty. Jack Ryan must be the the first TV show to suggest that 9/11 was too cheap. B-<doc-sep>For those of us who missed the big-screen horror hit “The Quiet Place,” but faithfully watched NBC’s “The Office” for nine years (that would be me), it’s rather difficult to envision John Krasinski as anything other than Dunder Mifflin Paper Company’s lovable goofball. A kick-butt action hero? Please. Related Articles Fall TV calendar: Dates for all the new and returning shows But check out Amazon Prime’s amped-up new series “Jack Ryan” (available Friday) and there he is — playing Tom Clancy’s iconic CIA man while trading rock-‘em, sock-‘em haymakers with the bad guys and plunging headfirst into a firestorm of bullets and bombs. Wow. How did that happen? Funny thing is the show’s creators might have been thinking the same thing — that many of us would see Krasinski as Jim Halpert. So they did their best to ease into the transition. In fact, when we first meet Jack, he’s — you guessed it — an office desk-jockey. As realized by former “Lost” writers Carlton Cuse and Graham Roland, Amazon’s “Jack Ryan” is a modern-day prequel to Clancy’s novels and the five movies they spawned. So TV Jack starts out as a low-level analyst at Langley. There’s a quiet, even nerdy, nature about him. He’s into fantasy baseball, his cubicle is lathered in sticky notes and crunching numbers is his jam. While dutifully tracking the financial trends of potential terrorists, Jack discovers millions of dollars in suspicious transactions tied to Islamic extremist Mousa Bin Suleiman (Ali Suliman). It’s a red flag that prompts visions of the next 9/11, so Jack goes out of his comfort zone — trying hard to convince his initially wary boss James Greer (Wendell Pierce) that swift action is required. As improbable as it seems, the two men soon find themselves en route to Yemen, where all hell breaks loose and Jack Ryan is quickly forced to behave a lot more like Jack Bauer. That he can handle himself in a brawl doesn’t come as a total shock because we’ve learned earlier that Jack is a former Marine who has kept in good shape by doing a lot of rowing on the Potomac. And if you still don’t believe it, there’s a scene where Krasinski sheds his shirt and reveals a set of six-pack abs. So deal with that, evildoers. Embracing a character previously played by the likes of Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck and Alec Baldwin, our guy Krasinski is up for the challenge. He’s as effortlessly charming and relatable as ever — an actor who just has a way of putting a smile on your face. The series is also bolstered by some of the biggest, most intense action scenes on television — if you’re into that kind of thing. And it earns bonus points for presenting a main villain who is more than just a slime-ball caricature. We’re given glimpses into Suleiman’s family life and his tragic backstory that doesn’t make us condone what he’s up to, but at least helps us to understand his take on things. Unfortunately, there are a few drawbacks that keep “Jack Ryan” from being a fully rave-worthy endeavor. For one, it could use some of the tension-cutting humor that the movies often deployed. It also doesn’t help that its overarching, terrorist-hunting narrative feels overly familiar and generic, especially when compared to the intriguing complexities of a “Homeland.” (I spotted a major plot twist in the first episode coming from a mile away). Still, there is enough production value and emotionally wrenching tension to lure us back for more. And whether he’s chained to his desk, or out in the field, Krasinski keeps us rooting for him. BACK TO ‘OZARK’: “People make choices, Wendy,” Marty Byrde says to his wife in the Season 2 opener of “Ozark.” “Choices have consequences.” That’s a drastic understatement when it comes to this dark suspense thriller, which resumes Friday on Netflix. Ex-suburbanites Marty and Wendy (Jason Bateman and Laura Linney) made some downright horrible (and amoral) choices that have left them at the mercy of a major crime syndicate and entangled with a couple of redneck drug lords in the backwoods of Missouri. Picking up shortly after the mind-blowing events of its Season 1 finale, “Ozark” now has Marty and Wendy yearning to escape their troubles by fleeing to a faraway land with their two teen children. Ah, if only. … But this is TV, where escape never comes easy, especially in an ongoing serial. Unfortunately, for “Ozark,” the pressure to keep various narrative plates in the air has led to a much slower pace and some increasingly ludicrous plot twists. The result? A sophomore season that isn’t nearly as addictive as the one that preceded it. Contact Chuck Barney at cbarney@bayareanewsgroup.com. Follow him at Twitter.com/chuckbarney and Facebook.com/bayareanewsgroup.chuckbarney.<doc-sep>A CIA agent made famous by one of America’s best-known spy novelists has been tasked with a very special mission — turning around one of streaming TV’s most massive ships. The new series “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” predates the planned pivot by new Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke, in which the streamer will move from boutique TV to a tentpole-heavy strategy. But it fits neatly within that programming philosophy, and its fate will provide an understanding of whether the site’s reboot can be effective. The Jack Ryan series of books and films is beloved, if aging; if it can work on Amazon’s often-vexed service, it bodes well for even more ambitious genre series, such as the upcoming “Lord of the Rings” effort. The first four episodes of “Jack Ryan” are cause for optimism; the best sign is the casting of John Krasinski, a happily low-key star, in the lead. After the enormous box office success of “A Quiet Place,” of course, Krasinski’s public profile looks a lot different, but his CIA desk jockey here is still amiably close to his cubicle dweller from “The Office.” The Ryan character has been played on film by imposing presences like Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford, but in keeping with recent tradition, where a younger actor steps in (Ben Affleck in 2002, Chris Pine in 2014), Krasinski embodies a Ryan who’s out of his depth. His slight tremulousness, his lack of toxic certitude, serves the story well. His first moments on-screen establish a refreshing duality: We see the actor, fit and unruffled, completing a rowing workout; then we see him biking to work, during which he inelegantly responds to drivers on the road and very nearly gets run over by someone who winds up being his recently transferred superior, James Greer (a strong Wendell Pierce). The lesson, which “Jack Ryan” restates throughout in different ways: This Ryan is assured of little but his own fallibility; he’s aware of his weaknesses — and is able to play against them — in a manner hardly befitting a screen super-spy. Putting forward his theory about a potential terror cataclysm being hatched in Yemen, Ryan seems defeated but hardly surprised that he’s ignored. More than any big-screen idol one could imagine in the part, Krasinski has practice and expertise at playing a low man on the totem pole. His Ryan stands out for his welcome lack of swagger. The agent is eventually heard; a stuffy party at which he’s being pumped for information gets crashed by a military helicopter that sweeps him off to a field operation. This happens to kick off the element of the show that is least successful, a tenuous romantic connection with a glamorous surgeon played by Abbie Cornish. “He’s kind of a type B, type C kind of guy,” she reflects later, stunned that such a meek fellow lives such an evidently interesting life. Though it’s fun to watch Ryan try to keep up his cover story around her, Cornish’s high-flying character has the tendency to emphasize just how simple Ryan is by contrast, more so than is needed. After all, Krasinski is doing plenty to show us Ryan’s quiet and still nature, often less with a line reading than with a glance, as when, overseas, his eyes catch a prison cell in which some sort of human suffering is unfolding. “Hey, Archie, leave your merit badges at the door,” Greer intones. The sequences in the field often falter when depicting action: The explosions and combat, despite the show’s big budget, can come off confusing and underwhelming. But Ryan, feeling his way through situations he never encountered behind the desk, provides a worthy anchor for our attention. Best of all, the show knows when to get the character out of the way and concentrate on telling other stories. That the series hinges on a plot emerging from the Middle East, rooted in Islam — at one point, a villain proclaims his goal of building “the greatest Islamic empire” — is likely to catalyze protest, much like the conversation that surrounded “Homeland” for years. While there’s a sometimes-gratuitous focus on the wages of terror, including a genuinely terrifying gas attack on a church, “Jack Ryan” deserves credit for analyzing the ways in which events that seem to originate overseas actually have their roots in American foreign policy. The show’s first scene depicts two children playing in Lebanon in 1983, their frolicking interrupted by the screaming of fighter jets dropping bombs. Here, potential terrorists don’t act out of a desire for domination or religious fervor but because they’ve been radicalized by wars in which the U.S. has played an active part. We see these stories not through Ryan’s eyes but through the residents’; they’re far more fully realized people than they might be elsewhere. All of which adds up to an adaptation that’s more than a cosmetic update. Compared with his rivals in the spy game, Ethan Hunt of “Mission: Impossible” and Jason Bourne, Jack Ryan looks downright heroic in his ability to suit himself to a time in which automatic presumption that America is doing the right thing is on the decline. (To its credit, “Homeland” has done similar work, albeit with a vastly more dynamic lead making her own statement about institutional power.) Krasinski’s Ryan is fueled by data and by a willingness to listen, and he has goals in mind greater and more humane than simply ensuring another American century. Asked by a French colleague how he can justify being in the service of the U.S. — itself a strikingly provocative question for a Tom Clancy adaptation — Ryan responds: “I figure it’s better to be on the inside and maybe be able to change something than be on the outside and not be able to change anything.” The character’s on-screen mission is still unfolding, but it’s not too much to hope that this vision of a super-agent more interested in service than in world-conquering finds its audience on Amazon, and continues to adapt the spy serial for a humbled era. Drama: Amazon (Eight episodes, four review), Fri., Aug. 31. Cast: John Krasinski, Wendell Pierce, Abbie Cornish, Ali Suliman, Dina Shihabi. Executive producers: Carlton Cuse, Graham Roland, John Krasinski, Morten Tyldum, Michael Bay, Andrew Form, Brad Fuller, Daniel Sackheim, Mace Neufeld, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Marcy Ross.<doc-sep>
With the debut of Amazon’s Jack Ryan, John Krasinski will be the fifth actor to play the title character, a CIA analyst introduced in a series of best-selling Eighties novels by Tom Clancy(*). Krasinski follows Alec Baldwin in The Hunt For Red October, Harrison Ford in Patriot Games and A Clear and Present Danger, Ben Affleck in The Sum of All Fears and Chris Pine in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. (*) I devoured the early books as a teenager, but stopped reading the series well before Ryan’s career advanced to him assuming the presidency, let alone before other authors continued the series following Clancy’s death. You can look at the frequent recasting and reboots in one of two ways. Either Ryan as a character is elastic enough to be played by so many relatively different performers (albeit all of them tall white guys) across so many different geo-political eras. Or he’s bland enough that you can plug in anyone, at any time, and it won’t make much difference. The first four episodes of the Amazon series (it debuts August 31) lean more towards the latter theory. It’s an entertaining watch, but owing more to the sheer craft of the people making it than to anything particularly compelling about Ryan himself. Competent storytelling isn’t something that should need praising for a TV show in 2018, yet Jack Ryan — adapted by Carlton Cuse and Graham Roland, with early directors including Morten Tyldum, Daniel Sackheim and Patricia Riggen — stands in striking contrast to so many sluggishly-paced, poorly-lit streaming drama wallows of recent vintage. It moves briskly and offers up at least one big action set piece per episode — though nothing as impressive as in the Ryan films, nor even TV shows like Strike Back or Daredevil. The production makes good use of international locations and the writers put in the necessary effort to make terrorist big bad Suleiman (Ali Suliman) a human being with recognizable motivations. It’s familiar but never dull. As for Jack himself? Krasinski is good, though he can be a bit too understated in a role that already trends that way. We’ve again gone back to the beginning of Jack’s CIA career, as a former Wall Street trader who specializes in following terrorists’ financial transactions. Cuse and Roland are definitely playing with the contrast between their leading man’s Jim Halpert persona (Jack spends a lot of time at his desk trying not to react visibly to his erratic boss) and his pumped-up 13 Hours physique (Jack also spends a lot of time examining new and old scars from his adventures). I would suggest drinking every time Jack tells someone that he’s just an analyst, but you’d likely die of alcohol poisoning. Those protestations are inevitably followed by his scene partner speculating about Jack’s hidden depths — “I think you are a wolf,” suggests a French cop, “who plays at being a sheep” — as if to overcompensate for how calm and easygoing he seems. There’s also a forgettable romance with Abbie Cornish’s Cathy (played variously in the movies by Gates McFadden, Anne Archer, Bridget Moynahan and Keira Knightley), the daughter of Jack’s former Wall Street boss. The more interesting relationship Jack has is with his new boss Jim Greer (Wendell Pierce, following in the large footsteps of James Earl Jones). Greer has been reimagined more thoroughly than Jack, and is now a disgraced and bitter former CIA station chief finding career redemption through the work of this whiz kid he slowly learns to trust. It’s a character to whom Pierce and the writers give a lot of shading — Greer is also a lapsed Muslim reconnecting with his faith after the end of the marriage for which he converted — and Jack Ryan is at its most vibrant in the awkward push-pull between reluctant mentor and wary protégé. It’s a show that knows exactly what it wants to be and is mostly quite successful at it. There’s no particular need for another Jack Ryan reboot, but nor does the show feel like a hopeless relic from a time before Jack Bauer or Carrie Mathison. The film version of Hunt for Red October is a suspense classic that the rest of the movies and now this show have never come close to equaling, but it set an aspirational goal that has served its follow-ups well, all the way through this latest attempt. Like Jack Ryan himself, the Amazon show is smart and confident and thorough.