Fans of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan will feel right at home in this action movie. John Krasinski’s Jack Ryan cracks jokes and kills plenty of bad guys by the end—though he tries to operate in a morally upright manner. Still, like the TV series, visceral violence and heavy crude language make this R-rated flick harder to justify bringing the whole family to see.
Something action heroes like Jack Ryan need to learn: You’re never out of the action-hero business.
Jack tried his best to transition to civilian life. He even got himself a cozy financial gig. But then the deputy director of the CIA, James Greer, reached out to Jack. (Well, more like chased him down with a convoy of black SUVs.) He’s got a secret contact in Dubai with valuable information, and he needs Jack to get the info the man has.
It’s a simple mission, really. Except Jack knows that “simple” and “mission” go together like peas and ferrets—that is, they don’t. At all.
Indeed, there’s more to the story than Greer let on, and it’s not long before Jack, CIA field officer Mike November and MI6 agent Emma Marlow are dodging the knives and bullets of attackers.
Jack soon discovers that those attackers were sent courtesy of Liam Crown, a former member of the now-defunct Starling program—a CIA black ops team made in the wake of 9/11 to infiltrate and destroy terrorist clusters from the inside. The benefit of Starling was that it never had to get permission to take out the bad guys. But a sketchy operation forced its termination.
Liam never agreed with that decision. He’s adamant that Starling is still necessary to cease and prevent terrorist plots. And he’s decided to keep running the program himself.
And he’ll make sure the world’s leaders knows just how necessary Starling is—even if it means showing them what might happen without it.
Jack holds to a strict moral compass. He’s indignant when he discovers that Greer approved Starling, asking the man how a group granted unlimited personal discretion makes them any different than those they’re trying to stop. While Jack agrees that it was obviously good to take down terrorist clusters plotting to harm civilians, he recognizes that programs like Starling can be abused. As such, upholding and protecting the values we hold dear without compromising on what is right and wrong is a plumb line through the film.
Jack, Emma and Mike put their lives on the line to take down Liam and some reactivated terrorist groups. And the movie points to the real-life soldiers who risk their lives to keep us safe, too.
Someone jokes that a flight attendant is an angel.
A woman notes how a man has “made his affections known to me twice.” “Three times,” the man corrects.
The deaths witnessed here can often be visceral: Bullets hit their marks, leaving holes in heads and spraying blood out the other end. A couple of men are forced to the ground and then executed. An assassin cuts a man’s throat, and the victim gurgles on blood as he dies. A woman gets shot and slammed against a wall. Someone dies in an explosion, and others are injured by resulting shrapnel. We see an estimated two or three dozen men die before the movie’s end. There’s a reference to alleged torture.
We hear the f-word more than 25 times, including one instance paired with “mother.” The s-word is used roughly the same number of times. Other crudities include “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–n,” “h—” and “b–tard.” God’s name is used in vain 15 times, the majority of which are joined with “d–n.” Jesus’ name is likewise abused 11 times.
People sip wine, beer and liquor. People smoke cigarettes.
The events of the movie are the result of the creation of Starling. The black ops team was created so that the CIA could bypass red tape and more effectively counter terrorist groups. Unfortunately, this lack of oversight lead to abuse of the system.
In our TV review of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, we noted that the eponymous character (Jack Ryan, not Tom Clancy) was the subject of 22 novels and five movies.
Well, time for an update. To date, now it’s 28 books, one TV show and six movies. I’d tell Jack to take a sabbatical, but as this film notes, the action hero already tried to do that—and they still brought him back.
So, what’s the agent with the two first names up to this time? Much of the same as in the Prime Video show, it turns out: outsmarting bad guys and saving the day.
Jack Ryan, the show, was a TV-MA watch, and Ghost War earns its MPA equivalent with an R rating. That’s on account of the visceral violence and some heavy profanity—both prominent elements in the show (so this won’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s kept up with John Krasinski’s version of the character).
On the bright side, while nudity and sex were present in the TV show, such elements are entirely absent here. But while that omission is appreciated, the movie’s other content will nevertheless make it hard to justify bringing the whole family to see.
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He’s also an avid cook. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
