Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan: Ghost War Review - A Well-Made Action Movie That Struggles To Stand Out

Jack Ryan has been a presence on our screens for decades, with plenty of stars playing the character created by author Tom Clancy. One of the actors with the longest runs on the character is John Krasinski, who got to explore Jack's motivations for four seasons of TV. Now, his iteration is making the leap to the movies with Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan: Ghost War, literally dragging the character out of retirement for the sake of a new mission that could threaten the entire world.

Similar to the show that spawned it, the film benefits from good talent across the board, all coming together to deliver a compelling action experience. Krasinski fits easily back into the role, and there are even some genuinely interesting story threads brought up in the second act. Unfortunately, though, those effective pieces don't quite come together to make something special. It's a solid entry in the larger universe of Tom Clancy adaptations and remains entertaining throughout, even if it doesn't do enough to really stand out in a crowded field.

Jack Ryan Returns To The Field – And It's Pretty Fine

Despite his efforts to escape the world of espionage and go into civilian sectors, John Krasinski's Jack Ryan is forced back into action when his old ally at the CIA, James Greer (Wendell Pierce), tasks him with a new mission. However, this assignment ends up being tied to secrets from Greer's past that have come back to haunt him, putting Jack in serious danger.

Ghost War keeps the action moving at a decent clip, especially once it starts playing with expectations by revealing the true machinations and motivations of Liam Crown (Max Beesley). A soldier trained by Greer during the War on Terror, Crown has increasingly embraced a hardline approach to global peacekeeping, making him a major threat to the world at large. This sets the stage for a globe-trotting adventure during which Jack Ryan faces off with plenty of dangerous mercenaries and government agents as he tries to help figure out what's going on.

While a returning Michael Kelly as CIA Agent Mike November offers some levity, the film gets a real shot in the arm when Sienna Miller's Emma Marlow enters the scene. An agent for the British government, the no-nonsense field operative makes for a fun pairing with Ryan, bringing a bit of snarky fun and surprising emotional beats to the film. The entire cast adjusts well to the more overt action sequences, especially a chase through the streets of London that ratchets up tension at a solid clip.

Directed by Andrew Bernstein, Ghost War works best when it has some good action going on. While it's never necessarily revolutionary, there is enough grit and grime to the sequences that make them land well in the moment. Likewise, the dialogue-heavy scenes are all shot, performed, and cut with an effective (and unshowy) edge.

Ghost War Doesn't Realize Its Full Potential

There are some very interesting ideas at play in Ghost War's underlying story, especially with how it relates to the atrocities of the past coming back into the light. There's a version of the story that delves more heavily into that, wrestling with how far fear pushed us in the past and how that shadow continues to hang over our heads decades later.

However, this ends up just feeling like surface-level scene dressing in the long run, especially once the film jumps into a more action-packed final stretch. At that point, the moral quandaries that set the stage for a genuinely interesting Jack Ryan story give way to the more standard version of that kind of narrative. As an extension of the Jack Ryan character, Ghost War touches on some interesting ideas that Krasinski clearly finds engaging. His best scenes in the movie are the ones where Jack is questioning authority and addressing the flaws of the past. It's a shame that the movie then shifts back into basic action movie elements.

It's a technically fine film that doesn't do anything super inventive, but remains capable of telling a concise story with clear action. Fans of the Jack Ryan show should definitely check it out, and appreciators of military action and espionage will probably find plenty to love, too. For everyone else, Jack Ryan: Ghost War could have been something bigger and better.