Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit though, gets the international-espionage ingredients almost exactly right.

Soundly structured, smart and fast, with a plausible central scenario, several gripping moments and well-wrought dialogue.

Too much of the action in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit takes place on laptops, thumb drives, and video monitors.

The film is slow in getting started and once it's underway it's only intermittently involving. It's also occasionally far-fetched.

Branagh, taking advantage of his experience helming 2011’s “Thor,” shows an allegiance to the genre he’s working in; both as director as co-star, he pours on the menace.

There’s promising raw material here, particularly in the early scenes. But the film’s second half seems determined to snuff out the promise of its first, making it hard to wish for this incarnation of the character, or any, to have more big-screen adventures.

Branagh might as well have opened a can and dumped it on a plate, the ridges of a factory-line production still perfectly hatched on a gelatinous cylinder of crud.

One of the best films I've seen in a while. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is possibly the best spy thriller I've ever seen. Some reasons for this are the amazing cast, led by Chris Pine, who should really get more credit for his talent. The plot was well developed and interested and the dialogue had a great combination of realism mixed with some thrown in humor that lightened an otherwise very dark and intense movie. Intense would be the word of choice, too, because this is definitely an edge-of-your-seat thriller from fairly early on. I couldn't give it top marks mainly because of the way the earlier part of the film is structured. It feels a bit cut-and-paste and doesn't develop the characters as well as it could've. The movie flies by so it easily could've been 15 minutes longer in order to better develop these things. Nonetheless, it's a great movie and worth the price of entry.

Fantastic cast and there were some really cool things about it but still kind of flat for me. Not bad and maybe 10 years ago it would have been looked upon a little better.

This was the best movie that January had to offer this year. It has some decently exciting stuff that, while not groundbreaking at all, will tide people over for about a day or two.

Total garbage. The first 3rd of the movie isn't too bad, and actually gets you excited for the rest, but it ends up disappointing. Zero excitement, zero intelligence, and zero story. One of the most boring films I have ever seen.

As average as they get, seen it all a million times already. Full of over the top usual BS and mission impossible wanna be, below average directing and acting to match, just a quick hit and run movie to rake in some cash. An alright movie to watch on TV while multitasking, nothing more.