“The mark of intellectual honesty is the solicitation of opposing points of view.”
— Tom Clancy, in The Sum of All Fears, 1991
Tom Clancy at Burns Library, Boston College. Taken by Gary Wayne Gilbert. Gary Wayne Gilbert, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
“Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” (2014) is easily the least of the Tom Clancy adaptations. But that shouldn’t be enough to indict the film; the other film treatments of the author’s books have all been roundly excellent. (Okay, 2002’s often-reviled “The Sum of All Fears” might be an exception, but I still like that flick even if I’m in the minority.) I’d rate this outing a 6 out of 10.
It isn’t a bad movie … it’s just an average, generally undistinguished boilerplate spy thriller that seems half-heartedly rewritten as a reboot of the Clancy films. Screenwriters Adam Cozad and David Koepp pay cursory attention to the title character’s background, and a key plot development from the books that I will not spoil here. But the film utterly lacks the mood, detail or methodical plotting of anything Clancy created.
It’s all very generic stuff. We’ve got a generic, telegenic, twenty-something action hero (Chris Pine), his generic hot girlfriend (Keira Knightley), the expected Russian bad guy (Kenneth Branagh) and a by-the-numbers climax — including the last-second requirement to divert a bomb from its target. Rounding it all out is Kevin Costner, the most generic good guy ever to behave predictably on screen — he characteristically projects the expected, wholesome gravitas. Even this film’s title is generic — it sounds like the name a marketing department would come up with for an entry in a video-game series.
There are plot elements that are painfully implausible, even by spy-movie standards. Jack Ryan’s new girlfriend, for example, surprises him by arriving in Russia in a flourish of quirky-girlfriend spontaneity, only to discover his secret career and then be fully enlisted in a spy operation. Branagh doubles as the movie’s director; his work here is surprisingly problematic. This is yet another movie in which important action sequences are barely comprehensible because of frequent, rapid cuts.
Oh, well. It certainly isn’t all bad. There isn’t a single bad actor in the film, for example. If I don’t like Branagh’s directing, I love his acting. The guy is magnetic — he alternately and convincingly projects menace and charisma to perfection. Alec Utgoff shines too, in a small role as a soft-spoken, ironically disarming Russian assassin.
People tend to either love or hate Costner. I like him quite a bit. No, he doesn’t always demonstrate an incredible range. But his acting is competent and he’s likable and consistently convincing. He’s the actor equivalent of that old American sedan that isn’t flashy but always starts reliably when you need it to get you to work.
Hey, you might like this movie far more than I did. I was an obsessive fan of the books, so my standards may be a bit high where they are adapted to the screen. Your mileage may vary.
I didn’t quite love the first season of the “Jack Ryan” television series, but I still really, really liked it. It’s a decent adaptation of Tom Clancy’s source material, albeit a very loose one. (And that’s just fine — we already have a number of excellent films that closely adapt the events of the books; we don’t need another methodical retread of the author’s novels.) I’d rate this an 8 out of 10.
There are some narrative weaknesses, particularly in the show’s failure to sustain tension between its episodes. And there are some surprise plot developments that the show telegraphed a bit obviously. (I usually don’t pick up on these things, but even I saw the clues.) There is also a subplot involving a drone operator that is largely unnecessary … some viewers will find it interesting while others will not.
“Jack Ryan” also suffers just a little in comparison with the Audience network’s superior “Condor” (2018). That excellent show covered much of the same subject matter, with its own ordinary CIA-analyst thrust into deadly game with terrorists. Season 1 of “Condor” was better written, boasted an amazing cast, and was far more frightening.
John Krasinski does a good job as the title character. I’ve always thought that this character would be tough for an actor to play, simply because he is so consistently nondescript. (The whole character concept is that he usually appears to be an especially bright but otherwise ordinary civil servant … his background as a United States Marine and his patriotism and courage aren’t things that he advertises.) Krasiniski’s Ryan is closer to that of the books than the version we see in the Harrison Ford films. I love Ford as much as the next person, but his interpretation of the character was too a bit too meek and diffident for me. That wasn’t quite the Jack Ryan that Clancy created.
What’s strange about the show is that it truly shines when deviates widely from the source materiel — especially in the character of Jim Greer. He is played to perfection here by Wendell Pierce, and he is no longer the gentle, wizened father figure that we saw in his counterpart from the books and movies. Nor is he a minor character — Pierce’s Greer is a gruff, pissy operations man fresh off of an ominous and unfair demotion, who shoots and runs right alongside Ryan when the bad guys attack. It sounds preposterously stupid. But … it works — largely, I think, because of Pierce’s talent. He’s a good enough actor to sell the idea and he invests Greer with a kind of perpetually disgruntled, antisocial charm. I honestly would continue watching this show if it focused on him as the main character.
When Season 1 of “Condor” was good — and it almost always was — it was a cinema-quality spy thriller. This was a smart, suspenseful, well made TV show that was very nearly perfect — I’d rate it a 9 out of 10.
“Condor” was adapted loosely from James Grady’s 1974 book, “Six Days of the Condor,” and its famous film adaptation the following year, “Three Days of the Condor.” I’ve neither read the former or seen the latter, but I can tell you that this new iteration of the story is intelligently written, nicely directed and edited, and well performed by its actors. It seems to channel the modus operandi of Tom Clancy’s books and films — showing multiple thoughtful characters plotting and acting either against or alongside one another — while the show keeps the tension high with sequences of surprise violence. (And there is indeed some disturbing violence here, particularly when the story calls for it to be perpetrated against non-combatants. “Condor” aired on the Audience channel on DirecTV; I suspect its content might be too much for a regular network.)
William Hurt has always been a goddam national treasure, as far as I’m concerned. (I may be biased in my appraisal of his work, as I grew up watching him in films like 1983’s “Gorky Park” and 1988’s “The Accidental Tourist.” I think he’s one of the best actors out there.) Seeing his talent colliding with Bob Balaban’s on screen should make this show required viewing for anyone who enjoys spy thrillers. (There is an extended, loaded exchange between them in a coffee shop here that is absolutely priceless.)
The whole cast is great. I’ve never been a fan of Brendan Fraser, simply because his movies are usually too goofy for me — but he shines in “Condor,” playing against type as an awkward villain.
Leem Lubany is terrific as the story’s merciless assassin. (See my comments above about the violence.) The role doesn’t call for her to have much range, as her character is a somewhat stoical sociopath. But she looks and sounds the part — combining sex appeal with an incongruous, calm, homicidal intensity. She reminded me a lot of Mandy, Mia Kirshner’s priceless, plot-driving assassin in Fox’s “24” (2001-2014).
If “Condor” has a failing, then it lies with its saccharine protagonists. The screenwriters seem to have gone to great lengths to paint an edgy, unpredictable, violent world full of compromised good guys and moral ambiguity. Why, then, are its handful of young heroes so implausibly perfect? The putative hero is “Joe,” nicely played Max Irons, who is just fine in the role. But the writers make him so idealistic, so gentle, so smart and so kind that it just requires too much suspension of disbelief. At one point I even wanted to see a bad guy at least punch him in the face, simply for being a goody-goody. It makes the story feel weird, too. (Who wants to see Jesus in a violent spy thriller?) The few other protagonists that we see here are also too good — they feel like thinly drawn, cookie-cutter heroes and not real people.
There are some plot implausibilities, too, that I’ve seen pointed out by other reviewers. (I have arrived at the resignation that others are simply far more perceptive about these things than I am.) But there was nothing that affected my enjoyment of Season 1.
“Condor” is great stuff. I recommend it.
I’m pretty sure that’s John Dryden, and not a Chinese aphorism. I learned it years ago when Tom Clancy quoted Dryden at the beginning of one of his novels. (I can’t remember which — but I think it was one of his revenge-minded tales like “Without Remorse” or “Debt of Honor.”) Strangely enough, Goodreads has the quote falsely attributed to Clancy himself.
But it works. Well done, Fortune Cookie People.
The other one I got advised me, “Do not build your happiness on others’ sorrow.” That sounds like good advice to me — and it’s a bit more high-minded than Dryden’s warning.
I’ve run variations of that quote from Homer’s “Iliad” here at the blog before; I think the translation that I like the best is the shortest: “There are no compacts between lions and men, and wolves and lambs have no accord.” (I read that at the preface of one of Tom Clancy’s novels — I believe it was “Clear and Present Danger.”)
The most popular translation I can find online however, is below. (The speaker here is Achilles.)
“Fool, prate not to me about covenants. There can be no covenants between men and lions, wolves and lambs can never be of one mind, but hate each other out and out an through. Therefore there can be no understanding between you and me, nor may there be any covenants between us, till one or other shall fall and glut grim Mars with his life’s blood. Put forth all your strength; you have need now to prove yourself indeed a bold soldier and man of war. You have no more chance, and Pallas Minerva will forthwith vanquish you by my spear: you shall now pay me in full for the grief you have caused me on account of my comrades whom you have killed in battle.”
So I finally got around to checking out “The Last Ship” (2014), and while the pilot didn’t immediately have me hooked, it seems like a decent show. I’d rate it an 8 out of 10, and I’ll probably continue watching it.
I was surprised I’d heard so little about this program … it’s a big-budget, post-apocalyptic military science fiction series, but none of my fellow horror or sci-fi nerds mentioned having seen it.
The plot setup seems like something that would please horror fans — a virus eradicates 80 percent of the world’s population, and a lone American naval vessel elects to remain at sea. (They’re fortunate enough to be carrying a civilian virologist who was tasked by the fallen United States government to develop a vaccine.) And there are hints that the show’s writers would do well scripting a frightening TV series — there are a couple of nice flourishes for a serialized horror show right here in the pilot.
But the story’s horror elements are minimized in favor of a more mainstream, safe-for-general-audiences techno-thriller. And that’s not a bad thing, because it succeeds as a such. The show is based on a 1988 novel by William Brinkley, and it’s produced in cooperation with the United States Navy. (The destroyers U.S.S. Halsey and the U.S.S. Dewey stand in for the fictional U.S.S. Nathan James.) It seems smartly scripted with respect to both virology and how the military works. I’m barely literate in either of those subjects, but what I watched seemed coolly authentic, and that entertained me and held my attention. So while I might not recommend this to fellow “The Walking Dead” fans, I’d definitely recommend it to fans of Tom Clancy.
The directing is pretty good, the story moves along quite quickly, and the action scenes in the pilot are surprisingly ambitious and effective for a TV show.
The acting, I suppose, is average — though it’s always fun seeing Adam Baldwin on screen, and the square-jawed Eric Dane seems well cast and shows promise as the ship’s commanding officer.
The dialogue and character interaction are average at best. This isn’t high art when it comes to human storytelling. There are some pretty predictable character tropes, and a few exchanges are so cheesily melodramatic that they nearly insult the viewer’s intelligence. Dane’s commander faces off, for example, against a beautiful, independent, female scientist who doesn’t like following orders … gee, I wonder if we’ll see any romantic tension there?
Still, this looks like a good enough show, if its pilot is any indication. The good outweighs the bad, and I’m glad I heard about it.
Today is the Ides of March.
I suppose that Marc Antony’s speech from “Julius Caesar,” below, is the Western World’s definitive treatise on sarcasm?
I haven’t read it in its entirety since 10th grade English at Longwood High School. In doing so now, I’m surprised at how many pop cultural references to it spring to mind:
I think that it’s tremendously difficult to write a spoiler-free review of the third and final season of “Hannibal.” (No, I am no longer hopeful that the show might return via a different network or an Internet-based provider.) But I need to try to keep this review spoiler free … this really is a suspense thriller and, indeed, the second season ended in cliffhanger after which viewers were unaware of even which major characters survived. So … this will be pretty vaguely worded and a little tough to write.
I loved Season 3; anyone reading this blog could have guessed that, given that I’ve visibly been such a rabid fan of the program. I do think that it was the best show on television, and it easily beat out “The Walking Dead,” “Daredevil,” “Family Guy” and “The Strain” as my favorite. When it was good (which was most of the time) it was simply incredible. When I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did past seasons, it was because of deliberate creative and stylistic choices, my reaction to which I’m sure are mostly subjective. There were things I loved and things I didn’t love. All things considered, however, the shameless fanboy in me won out over the critic. I’d rate this season at a 9 out of 10.
First, here’s what I loved. The script, directing, acting, sets and musical score were as strong as ever. For a show that sometimes really struggled with dialogue in its first season, the writing in Season 3 was fantastic. I am referring to the story, characterization and dialogue across the board, but especially the key interchanges between characters: our main protagonist facing off against Hannibal Lecter, Bedelia du Maurier, and Rinaldo Pazzi. The performances here were simply fantastic, especially considering the complex, nuanced, but also mysterious characters the show’s writers have skillfully developed. Our surviving heroes were played with extraordinary skill.
Mads Mikkelsen was also predictably perfect, even given that Season 3 required a broader range, as Hannibal’s past and his adversaries humanized him this season in a manner we haven’t seen before. The script finally allowed Gillian Anderson to be a less stoical — her later monologue concerning a wounded bird was stunning. And the surprise standout here was Fortunato Cerlino as Pazzi — this secondary character could have been a one-note buffoon, but Cerlino and the writers turned him into such a “real” (and extremely interesting) character that I actually thought the show would depart from the source material and make him a hero of the story.
Scenes between certain survivors of the Baltimore massacre also beg for specific mention, but I just can’t do that without revealing who lived through it. The actors playing those “good guys” who are still alive did great jobs. (More on why that term is in quotation marks just a little later.) And they generally had well written character arcs. One character’s agenda at the beginning of Season 3 was actually genuinely touching, considering how ruthless this story’s characters typically are. (He or she arrives in Florence, where Hannibal has secreted awayy, merely to safeguard another.) Far more touching is the exposition of one character who did not survive Baltimore; it surprises the viewer with astonishing sadness.
Bear in mind — I obviously loved the dialogue, but, like the show, it actually won’t be to everybody’s taste. (No, for once that is not a deliberate pun.) It is overly stylized, and rarely naturalistic. This isn’t an extremely well scripted show in the manner of those like “M*A*S*H,” “LOST,” or “The West Wing,” and it isn’t a sit-com. Our heroes and villains often just really don’t sound like real people. It takes a greater degree of willing suspension of disbelief just to accept them. Yes, I was a nut for this TV show. But if somebody told me that they didn’t like it simply because the characters “talk funny,” I’d really understand that. I personally loved it, because a universe where super-smart criminals and investigators are squaring off against each other, and verbally ribbing their opponents to psychologically undermine them (when they’re not getting all stabbity-stabbity, taht is), appeals to me. Given the anti-intellectualism I’ve seen a lot in our culture, it’s refreshing to see an unabashedly intellectual TV show, with powerful characters, both good and bad, who are educated and beautifully articulate.
And … if you’re a horror hound, as I am? The show delivers. Season 3 was the most macabre. And with the introduction of the “Red Dragon” storyline, it became the most brutally violent. Generally, we no longer see the aftermath of gory murders, but see them in action. Remember a key scene near the end of Season 2, when the mutilation of a major character is understated, because he is seen mostly in shadow? That … kinda wasn’t a thing in Season 3. And it was frightening. A certain switcheroo the show pulled toward the end of the Mason Verger storyline was gut wrenching, really.
This show was brilliant, making its departure all the more bittersweet.
As for what I didn’t love? These were intentional changes and creative risks that might appeal just fine to another viewer. And showrunner Bryan Fuller actually advertised them in advance. He promised fans that the show would be far more surreal and would farther push the boundaries.
I have no doubt that many fans loved what he did. But considering Season 3 in its entirety, I’d rather he simply followed the maxim of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” For me, Season 2 was perfect, and these bold changes had slightly less satisfying results.
For me, the show became too surreal beginning it its second act, the Mason Verger storyline. Yes, the most striking images and sequences of the prior seasons were the surreal visions, dreams and thematic visuals. But these worked, in part, because of their stark contrast with the “real world.” They were one of the best parts of the show. But I didn’t want to see the entire program become something akin to a Terry Gilliam movie. I first got acquainted with Thomas Harris’ source novels with “The Silence of the Lambs” (both the book and the film) in 1991. That was a kind of “real world” police procedural, albeit with a principal villain that seemed larger than life. (For moviegoers, whether Lecter or Jame Gumb was the story’s main antagonist depends largely on your personal interpretation.)
A police thriller was Harris’ intention for most of his books, I think, with the only possible exception being 2000’s novel, “Hannibal,” with its lamentable, nutty ending. (I and other readers wanted to tear out the final pages of that book after we read it.) Harris examined criminal psychology and behavioral profiling in some of the same manner that Tom Clancy examined military technology and intelligence-gathering.
Yes, it’s amazing what Fuller was able to explore and accomplish with his departure from Harris’ books in the first two seasons. And horror-thriller fans really didn’t need another cop show. (The first half of Season 1 maybe relied a little too heavily on standard cops and robbers, and the seemingly perpetual stalemate between an anonymous villain and the good guys.) But, for me, the Mason Verger story arc was rendered in a style that was just too … far out. All those red visuals and baldfaced gore and references to inevitable death! It seemed like something penned by Franz Kafka, by Clive Barker, or maybe by Edgar Allan Poe on acid. A plot point involving livestock was just … too weird for me. I immediately was taken out of the story when I stopped to wonder whether such a freaky thing was even medically possible.
None of those things are bad (except for maybe the acid). But none of them are Thomas Harris either. None of them are “Hannibal,” for me, anyway. For an absolutely perfect treatment of the Mason Verger storyline, please see Ridley Scott’s 2000 film adaptation of the book. It’s one of my favorite films of all time, and I enjoy it far more than “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991). I find these characters so compelling that I want them to be real (or … y’know, at least the good guys, anyway). But for that to happen, they have to inhabit the real world, not some blood-soaked passion play with psychedelic music and 70’s-tastic visual flourishes.
As far as tone and content … I can’t believe I am actually writing this, but Season 3 might have gone too far for my tastes. Do you remember the death of a key investigator in Season 2? With the crime scene being the observatory? That was gruesome enough for a major protagonist with whom the viewer is asked to identify. Yes, as a horror movie fan, I’ve seen countless zombie and slasher films, but those stories’ victims are often throwaway characters with whom we spend only the running time of a feature film. This is a not-quite-primetime television show with characters we visit every week. The gory victimization here, for me, was just too much. Those who’ve seen Season 3 know I’m talking about one assailed character in particular. I’m also referring to another scene in which one character’s face was peeled off in closeup. I cringed. The movies managed to scare us without this stuff. If I’d wanted a “Hellraiser” movie, I’d have watched a “Hellraiser” movie. (See my disclaimer above … again, this is all purely subjective.)
The protagonists themselves became too dark for me. Yes, I know an ongoing theme here is that everyone under “the devil’s” influence is corrupted by him. But … my favorite TV show suddenly began to seem like a story with no good guys. Remember “The Silence of the Lambs?” Much of its emotional resonance resulted from Clarice Starling, who retained her innocence and nobility despite the horrors she’d faced, including her incidental, bizarre kind of intimacy with the caged Lecter.
We don’t have that here. We’ve got moral ambiguity, and character complexity that makes for great storytelling. But do we have a clear hero to root for? Often, no. One character distinguishes him- or herself by being morally heroic in the season’s first act … only to commit the same ethical mistake as in past seasons in the third act. One character (who I liked a hell of a lot in the prior seasons) went so “dark” that he or she was unrecognizable. And the script did little too support this character change, beyond the obvious fact that he or she was traumatized and was affected neurologically as well. (Bone marrow in a person’s blood can do that?) Margot Verger was great in the past as a righteous victim; here she seemed like a compliant turncoat. As far as I can tell, the only remaining characters who are unambiguously “good guys” are Jimmy and Brian, the goofy lab techs who appear only seldom for necessary exposition and rare comic relief.
The bad guys, too, seemed different. Mason Verger is played by a quite capable, but very different, actor. He seems far more controlled and intelligent in Season 3, and the unfortunate result is that he seems to have been replaced. Actor Michael Pitt brilliantly gave us a manic sexual deviant that was reminiscent of the comics’ incarnation of The Joker. Joe Anderson’s calmer Verger seems like … his Dad, maybe.
I was unhappy with key plot points here and there. Simply put, more people should have died at the Baltimore massacre at the end of Season 2. It was great seeing the characters I liked so much return, but it certainly made Hannibal seem like a surprisingly bloodless killer, and temporarily undermined him as a threat.
Hannibal’s major decision at the last supper in Florence is baffling, considering what we’ve seen throughout the length of the show. Then a crucial intervention here is made by characters who are tertiary and clownish — should those asshats really have been the ones to save the day (even if only temporarily)? The manner of Hannibal’s arrival at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane is unsatisfying, and robs the viewers of an emotional payoff (although it is lampshaded quite cleverly in the final episode). And Hannibal’s vicious threats in the final episode are too terrifying even for him, given the character’s well established … sense of “decorum.”
Oh, well. I realize that my criticisms above are detailed. But it’s only because I loved the show so much — not to mention the universe originally established by Harris in his books. I have since I was 19. Starling (who of course hasn’t appeared in Fuller’s universe) is one of my all time favorite heroes. Think of my nitpicks above as analogous to those of a die-hard Trekkie criticizing stardate continuity errors. (As bizarre as my own favorite fictional universes may be, Star Trek s an obsession that I will never truly understand).
“Hannibal” still really was the best show on television. I’m sad to see it go.
Keep kicking ass, Sweden.
It would be great if someone with expertise in international relations could explain to me at exactly what point in time Russia went INSANE.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 