Not surprisingly, ‘Jack Ryan’ gloriously fails the Bechdel test. While there are several female characters, they are disconnected and they spend their screen time helping Ryan in various ways. There’s the fresh-faced girl-next-door office assistant in a Catholic-school jumper (Hannah Taylor Gordon) that Ryan’s sketchy coworker ogles around their male-dominated office. On the other end of the super secret CIA cell phone there’s the phone-sex voice that arranges for Ryan’s suite to be cleaned after the assassination attempt. There’s the icy Russian assistant (Elena Velikanova) that escorts Ryan to Cheverin’s office. There’s the token female asian tech (Gemma Chan) in the spy van and the token black female tech (Montego Glover) in the spy plane.
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit U.S. Theatrical Release Poster
It’s the summer of 1990. You’ve gone down the ocean (this means you’re from Baltimore and you’ve gone to the beach). Blissfully unaware that UV light is a potent mutagen, you look upon the masses sitting in the sand. What are they reading? Does the cover art feature Bodoni typeface and a stylized tank or a fighter jet or a fucking grenade strapped to a knife carrying a gun? It does, because it’s one of the legion of techno-spy thrillers authored by Tom Clancy. Five have been made into feature films: The Hunt for Red October (1990); Patriot Games (1992); Clear and Present Danger (1994); The Sum of All Fears (2002); and now, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014). Continue reading “‘Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit’: Oil, War, Money, Movie!”
