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My husband and I love action/spy shows and movies, so I'd be remiss not to give Season 1 of Jack Ryan the high rating it deserves. It is violent, but not excessively so in the context of the nature of the show and necessary and logical plot developments.
The show, perhaps inevitably by its nature, is often problematical and troubling in its depiction of how American power is used and abused around the world. But at least it makes a serious attempt to be thoughtful and nuanced. It avoids mindless Islamophobia by creating a diverse range of Muslim characters (including one of the flawed CIA heroes), even making the Muslim lead villain (albeit fundamentally evil) a complex human being who sometimes evokes empathy. The villain's devout Muslim wife is one of the most fascinating and sympathetic characters.
The show is very well acted, impressively produced, and well written overall. Although the depiction of drone strikes pushes the envelope of unrealistic nonsense, one can only appreciate the effort the writers took to explore the moral dilemmas created by this horrifically tempting ability to play God, including following through on the efforts of one drone pilot to atone for a horrible mistake in which he was involved. It's good for American viewers to be forced to pay attention to the horrific practice, being done in their names, of aerial drone strikes in many countries around the world (something Americans would of course never tolerate being done in their own or any Western allied country).
See my 2-star review of Season 2 for a critique of how in that second season "Jack Ryan" takes a nose-dive, abandoning many of the nuanced virtues of the first season while doubling down on many of its flaws.
A minor sidenote (a comment I could make about MANY other contemporary American movies and cable/internet TV shows, so I'll vent on it here at some length to get it out of my system):
Why are even mature shows like this one, obviously unsuitable for children in any event (given all the violence), and clearly targeted only to adults, becoming so prudishly Victorian in their approach to sex? Is our society regressing in that regard?
It used to be (decades ago) that a violent R-rated spy or adventure film would often have some genuinely racy sex scenes (often with implied orgasm) and ample nudity (historically biased toward female nudity, but over the years more male actors showed it all too, for example Kevin Bacon in the trashy 1998 thriller "Wild Things"). Most European films and even TV shows have long taken a far more relaxed and realistic approach to nudity on screen.
Here we have a very hot lead actor (John Krasinski) portraying the title hero of the show, and his girlfriend (portrayed by Abbie Cornish) is very sexy as well, a fully rounded (no pun intended!) female character: intelligent, forceful, and unapologetically owning her own sexual agency.
Yet there's exactly one (so-called) "sex scene" between Krasinski and Cornish in all of Season 1 and it's laughably tame (PG-13 at most). And in tiresomely familiar fashion it fades out before anything really happens. Weirdly, there's more erotic energy (and nudity) in the one sex scene between the main villain and his wife (though it's ultimately tame as well).
So it's OK to depict people having their heads blown off but not, you know, getting off? Pleasure is more verboten than violent death? What kind of twisted message does that send, especially to the many kids and teenagers who will of course watch this with or without parental permission? What kind of weird social hang-ups about sex does it imply? I'm not suggesting porn; even a very intense sex scene, with strongly implied orgasms, need not involve any nudity or graphic depictions at all, and can be done tastefully in a way that advances plot and character development (Krasinski's hesitant developing relationship with Cornish is a major part of Season 1, though sadly she vanishes without explanation in Season 2). Maybe young people would be less obsessed with seeking out internet porn if there were more mature and realistic depictions of adult sex in mainstream fare?
Krasinski has exactly one brief moment of nudity in all of Season 1 (not connected to the pathetic sex scene): a brief glimpse of his bare backside in the shower, and even that carefully blurred, especially toward his front when there's a brief sideview. Heaven forfend that we might think he's anything other than a Ken doll! I'm guessing the whole point of that was to intentionally balance out the one brief glimpse of the villain's wife's behind (in their only sex scene). Showing female but not equivalent male nudity is rightly condemned as sexist.
In a European film, I suspect we might have seen a lot more of Ryan and his girlfriend. Yeah, you can say that would be "gratuitous," but isn't a shower scene itself (however tame) gratuitous? People get naked in real life, they have bodies and enjoy them, and the whole point of a movie or TV show is to depict people and life, right? As noted above, their relationship is a big part of the story, and sex is a big part of such a relationship.
Why are adult viewers, well into the 21st century, being treated like 13-year-olds who might giggle during sex ed class? Modern books (for decades now!) have been far more frank in dealing with sexuality. Why do movies and TV shows continue to lag so laughably far behind, actually regressing from the candor of previous decades? Apparently, even as the internet is ever more flooded with low-quality porn, we still live in a bizarrely repressed Victorian era when it comes to high-quality "mainstream" visual entertainment.
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From the manufacturer
Synopsis:
When CIA analyst Jack Ryan stumbles upon a suspicious series of bank transfers his search for answers pulls him from the safety of his desk job and catapults him into a deadly game of cat and mouse throughout Europe and the Middle East, with a rising terrorist figurehead preparing for a massive attack against the US and her allies.
Cast:
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John Krasinski as Jack Ryan |
Wendell Pierce as James Greer |
Abbie Cornish as Cathy Mueller |
Ali Suliman as Suleiman |
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