Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

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.

What Jack Ryan suffered most from, was a script that wasn't smart enough, to out-smart the the villains, pretty well thought out plan. The villain's plan is an "8" so to speak, but the hero's counter attack, is a 5... That compromises the films' integrity, logic and enjoyment.Jack Ryan couldn't live up to what I imagine was a plan roughly a decade in the making by Viktor Cherevin, but that probability wasn't portrayed too well either.All Kenneth Branagh did, to make Jack appear to be the smarter adversary, was him constantly making Jack inexplicably figure out Viktor's moves. Truth be told, given this particular story, Viktor had to win, but of course, he had to lose because of, because.Then there are all those badly edited scenes, so much so that, you can feel that, there is probably a good extra hour of footage that we'll never see, because it perhaps, was decidedly badly handled or it was directed into the ground and even more unimaginative. The final scene being the worst. The action is lack luster, the suspense is thrown to the wayside and it's end... Huh. Honestly,this is a movie, where if the villain won, it would've been so much more interesting, than Jack jumping out of a van, and then... Nothing exciting.Clearly it was meant to be a series... Sadly, it was seriesly (seriously), "non compliant, officer".When it started, it was lingering on 6. Then Mr Branagh engaged, enough to bring it to a 7... But then, somewhere, somehow, it plummeted.

This review focuses on the negative critics, which I find to be quite unrepresentative of the movie.Most negative reviews focus on the act that the marketing tag line "trust no one" was woefully unrepresentative of the actual plot. I have serious objections about that. There is a major betrayal early in the movie, at a point that no one expects, which sets the stage for confusion and doubts in the hero's mind through the rest of the film. This effect only works if you are concentrating on the main actor, suspending disbelief about watching a movie and instead letting yourself slip into the hero's mind: inexperienced in field Ops and betrayed on his first mission. All the negative reviews below are because the viewer was eating popcorn instead of falling into character. In truth "trust" in not a major plot line, but it's not absent either, as the review imply. It's just texture to build up the tension.This brings me to my second comment: I enjoyed this movie's plot, (despite, yes, many shortcomings regarding the details), because the story line was very representative of Tom Clancy's writing style, with multiple plots going on in parallel but on different time frames. This worked very well for me in the books, building up tension with very little relief until the last pages. The movie here produces the same effect with the same technique. I can accept that it makes the story somewhat convoluted at times, and it may possibly lose many viewers with short attention spans, causing some negative reviews. But if your attention can keep up, then you realize why the main character can "trust no one" - he is as confused by the plot as the viewer (because inexperienced and fallible), trying to keep up with the multiple objectives on multiple time frames. I found this to be an excellent technique to build suspense in an intelligent way, with very little special effects or dumb actions scenes (there are good action scenes, but no one is an invincible here - just plain human).In short, you will find this movie boring if you find iron man or superman to be great entertainment. If you've enjoyed reading the books, you may find this to be a better story than the previous Jack Ryan movies.

It's entertaining movie, a perfect operator, a good script. Movie is about the villains from Russia, spies (!!!) (of course script has hackneyed cliché, maybe even stupid cliché... but anyway...), so... I liked this movie a lot... Anyway! :-) Great actors, exciting scenes… As always I was satisfied a lot with Kenneth Branagh and Kevin Costner. I was surprised to discovered Chris Pine. And as usual I didn't like Kira Knightley (i don't know why... i find her too much plastic). But I like acting of Elena Velikanova. Cute, open mind, creative person. She could show us strong, willed nature of Katya. In summary, I can only say that "Jack Ryan" is high-quality Hollywood product, I recommend everyone, who still haven't watched ;-)