SPOILER-FREE PLOT SUMMARY
Now a civilian, retired CIA operative Jack Ryan (played by John Krasinski) is tracked down by Deputy Director James Greer (Wendell Pierce) in hopes he can help with a specific mission. A disavowed MI6 agent Liam Crown (Max Beesley) has kept an off-the-books initiative Project Starling alive despite the shared belief by both the American and British governments that it died years ago. Ryan, now mixed up in all this, receives an item during a hand off in Dubai but doesn’t know what to make of it. It’s not until Crown locates and contacts Ryan, Greer and MI6 agent Emma Marlow (Sienna Miller) that Ryan figures out what was passed to him. Crown demands the item and Ryan leads the terrorist leader on a wild goose chase back to Dubai in order to buy time to figure out a plan. When Ryan and Marlow discover the information Crown really wants, they will stop at nothing to extract the intel for themselves in order to keep it out of the wrong hands.
SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
JACK RYAN: GHOST WAR sees an American agent who’s agency is hunting a former MI6 assassin who’s putting together an operation of terrorism throughout the world. That American, by chance, meets up with a female MI6 agent to track down said assassin who has has a knack for always being one or two steps ahead of the American. Furthermore, the assassin doesn’t want to wreak havoc on the world because of money, but rather to make a statement.
You know, the combined plots of MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – ROGUE NATION and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT.
(There are actually two more parallels but this is a spoiler-free review so we’re omitting them.)
If you’re unfamiliar with the second half of the M:I franchise, you’ll enjoy JACK RYAN: GHOST WAR a lot more. Yes, you’ll still endure a ton of exposition, a lot of backstory explanation, some steretoypical action movie tropes and an embarrassing level of Cisco product placement but there’s also the fun Krasinski brings to the character, the joy of seeing Pierce continue his role in the franchise and the badassery Miller brings to the screen.
This is yet another film that would benefit from a theatrical release. Streaming an action movie of this ilk leaves a lot to be desired and proves that streaming services still put themselves ahead of what’s best for the medium. Yes, capitalism, but there’s a way to find a balance and, short of CRIME 101, Amazon hasn’t cared to find it yet.
That perma-rant aside, JACK RYAN: GHOST WAR is a slightly-better-than-average action movie that features good-but-nothing-special performances and a recycled plot from a superior franchise. If the action genre is your bag and you need something to put on that won’t let you down, you could do worse than GHOST WAR. That said, if the action genre is your bag, that means you’ve probably seen the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE franchise and should just go back and re-watch that instead.
JKG SCORE: 5.5 out of 10
Untitled Film Project 