Obviously, you’ve already seen our list of
10 Movies To See This Month and booked your tickets for all of them: but just in case it slipped your mind,
here’s some promoterial (you can have that word for free, marketing
departments) for “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” to get you in the mood. As we
noted over in that article, the film is aiming to revive a character previously
played by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck: Chris Pine takes the
role this time, with Kenneth Branagh directing and playing the villain viz a
szick Rrrrrrussian akzent (there’s a certain strange joy to be taken in the way
Branagh has grown out of serious Shakesperian thespianism and is enjoying his
50s directing massive action blockbusters).
The character may date back to the early
90s (and earlier in Tom Clancy‘s source material novels), but the clips that have
surfaced so far (including the “mega clip” we showed you a few days ago) have a
distinctly Bourne-ish feel. But then again, so does James Bond these days, so
maybe it’s just the new normal for action movies. Below we’ve got a quieter
clip with Pine alongside co-star Keira Knightley in “Jack Ryan: Couples Therapy.” There’s also a teeny tiny
featurette in which Pine suggests that everyman Ryan could be “your accountant,
your history teacher.” I went to the wrong school.
“Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit”
opens January 17th.