I wrote this for a review thread in The Forum that Shall Not Be Named, but reposting here:
I enjoyed Amazon's
Jack Ryan series. Limiting the series to eight episodes avoided the tendency these action-adventure streaming shows have of action up front to hook you, numerous episodes of nothing much happening, and then action in the finale. This spread the wealth fairly evenly throughout the whole run. There weren't any boring or filler episodes.
They made some pretty major changes to James Greer's character (originally played by James Earl Jones in the films), making him a Muslim convert (which is fine, but plays only a minor role in the plot, which is odd given the subject matter this season, which you would have presumed would be the reason for the change), something of a hothead, an experienced field operative rather than a desk jockey, and removing any reference whatsoever to his naval career and rank of admiral, which was a defining and important characteristic of his that played heavily into the plot of several stories. Now he's a career CIA field man who was disgraced in his prior Head of Station post in Pakistan and is trying to regain his reputation. I'm not one of those people who minds terribly that they change character backgrounds, though I was just surprised because being an admiral was so prominently a part of his identity. The excellent Wendell Pierce from
The Wire plays the role well, though, and I have no complaints about the execution of the re-imagined character.
Krasinski's Ryan is essentially the same character, an ex-Marine injured in a helicopter crash (though they had it take place during Iraq rather than a domestic training accident this time, and made one other major change to the circumstances of the crash which I'll leave unspoiled) who went on to work on Wall Street and then as a terrorism financing analyst at the CIA and eventually just straight intelligence analysis and increasingly serving in the field against his wishes and better judgment as time goes on. You can make a drinking game out of the number of times he laments that he's "just an analyst". The show is sadly lacking a Dwight character in the CIA office or even one Jim Face where he side-eyes the camera.
Krasinski is believable in his reluctant action hero role.
The show handled the motivations of the terrorist leader Suleiman (played by Ali Suliman) in a relatively nuanced way that helps you understand how he became a terrorist. As a child he lost family and friends and was severely burned in the Israeli anti-PLO aerial bombings in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon in the 80s, was rejected out of college in the 90s in his banking job in his new home in France for trying to innovate with digital banking transfers (which years later features in the plot, bringing financial analyst Ryan in), was abused and imprisoned for several years by French police who were profiling and harassing his brother for being Muslim (in prison is where he mostly became radicalized while trying to survive), went to Iraq to fight the American and coalition invaders, and fought against Assad in Syria, which is where he ended up forming his own group. He's not a nice guy by any stretch of the imagination, and does horrifying things to civilians and his family which are not in any way justified by what he's gone through, but I appreciated that they gave him a realistic and nuanced background for his radicalization.
His wife Hanin (played by Dina Shihabi) is terrified of the change that has come over her husband and by what he has become and seeks to get her family away from from, initiating a major subplot of the series. She was fine with him fighting in Iraq and in Syria against Assad, but his planned terrorist attacks on civilians (which she doesn't know the details of, but can see the buildup) and the changes to his personality cross the line for her and she decides to leave to join the Syrian refugees fleeing to Turkey and eventually Europe by sea.
Ryan's girlfriend (daughter of his former boss) and soon to be wife Dr. Cathy Mueller is well played by Abbie Cornish, and it's mildly spoilery but I'll just say her role as an epidemiologist (rather than an ophthalmologist) comes into play heavily towards the end of the show, and makes for an uncomfortable outing (to her) of Jack's status as a CIA officer rather than his cover as a State Dept. wonk when she's called in to consult on a military/intelligence briefing because of her expertise on diseases.
There are some plot elements that might have been inspired by
The Sum of All Fears and
Executive Orders used in the show (not Jack as President or a nuke, which aren't in this), but this is mostly a new storyline and Ryan's third filmic origin story, though it hits the major points of his backstory, including his Dad being a Baltimore cop (who died of cancer), as chronicled in
Without Remorse.
There's a subplot about a conflicted drone pilot (John Magaro) who regrets the innocent lives he's taken that you think is going to shoehorn back into the main terrorism plot somehow, but refreshingly it's just about him feeling ashamed about what he's done and wanting to make amends. I say this not to spoil anyone but so that you don't waste your time theorizing on what's going to happen to this guy, which they kind of misleadingly play up. He's basically just there to serve as a commentary on drone policy, and has a poignant moment with the surviving family (a grandfather and child) of one of his airstrike victims, though it stretches credibility somewhat that he could so easily travel into the middle of a warzone unescorted.
The show does lean very heavily on the acronyms, and makes little attempt to explain most of them or even provide context clues for some of them. I was a military brat, a Clancy reader, and keep up to date on military and government developments but even I found it kind of baffling at times.
The second season of the show will feature Russia as the main adversaries (which is hinted at in Greer's new assignment at the end of the show).
As if. That's so Cold War.
I'd give the show a "B+" grade. Not perfect, but pretty enjoyable and with a good cast and solid action scenes. Definitely not boring, and not as jingoistic as I was expecting.
