Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan: Ghost War: Movie Review

Cast: John Krasinski, Sienna Miller, Wendell Pierce, Max Beesley, Michael Kelly
Director: Andrew Bernstein

Jack Ryan as a character exists somewhere in the vacuum of a Cold War and the world of the 1980s where pulpy spy thrillers and deep conspiracy-heavy novels were all the rage.

After the dust had settled on 9/11 in 2001, there came a new kind of spy thriller saga - one that dealt with the ramifications of the world's changes. It's been a creatively flat time for the genre and it has to be said, despite some solid work in the Prime Video streaming series by John Krasinski, this spinoff TV movie really does little to majorly evolve the basics.

Ryan (Kransinski, who takes a co-writing credit here) is supposedly living a civilian life out of the CIA, but when he's approached by Greer (Pierce) to go to Dubai to meet with an old contact, he finds himself pulled back into the world of espionage after a former deadly conspiracy, long thought dormant, returns.

There's something extremely solid about this relatively flat outing that offers a checklist of what you'd expect from a thriller like it.

Explosions, car chases, people holding guns while running, B-roll cut scenes of Dubai and UAE skylines - it's all very formulaic and watchable enough fare, but it's the kind of film you can leave on in the background and not feel troubled if you've missed a couple of moments.

Cursory dialogue, mixed with jokes about being out and back in, along with some odd flirting between Ryan and a hard-bitten character played by Miller; it's all very by-the-book and not entirely engaging. It's more likely that fans of the show will warm to the movie, given it sees a swathe of returning characters and some callbacks to the past.

But the air of menace and suspense that should ridden a good thriller like this is sorely lacking throughout.

Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan: Ghost War is streaming now on Prime Video.