Jack Ryan: Ghost War heeded the Call of Duty

There hasn’t been a film starring James Bond since 2021 and while the world searches high and low for a new 007, the craving for spy movies remains unsatiated. Enter, Tom Clancy. Clancy first arrived in the public consciousness with his novel, The Hunt for Red October in 1984. His hero, Jack Ryan, an “analyst”, is a bigger, bolder and distinctly American spy. In those 40 years, Ryan has had many iterations, each successfully adapting to modern spycraft and tech. Ryan is a different flavour of agent to Bond in personality too, favouring stoicism and light machine gun skills over wisecracking diplomacy. However, Clancy’s Ryan stories retain the hallmarks of classic espionage: centring on a man with intense intellect, a strict moral code, and no fear of getting his hands dirty.

John Krasinski has played Ryan (since 2018’s TV reboot) so well that, not only does he get a crack at a big-screen outing, he also co-wrote the script for Ghost War (with Noah Oppenheim, who recently penned A House of Dynamite). What they have created is fun, moderately high-brow and with a distinctive post-9/11 paranoiac sheen that Clancy would approve of. Directed by Andrew Bernstein (also moving from TV), Ghost War is breakneck and never outstays its welcome, only faltering when its attempts to be authentic require heavy suspension of disbelief.

Ghost War starts with Ryan having left the CIA, now working as an actual analyst on Wall Street, until Deputy CIA Director and old buddy, James Greer (Wendell Pierce) conscripts him for a simple job: go to Dubai and pick up ‘something’ from a source. Always willing to do Greer a favour, Ryan feels obligated and, accompanied by another old buddy, Mike November (a zesty Michael Kelly) attempts to meet Greer’s British source. Things go awry with slit throats and gunfire as it becomes clear that a rogue British Agent (good to see you, Max Beesley!) with a personal vendetta against Greer also wants the intel. Ryan, Greer, Mike and British agent Emma Marlow (Sienna Miller) are tasked with working out what is really going on in a hail of London bullets.

In terms of action, Ghost War is another good video-game movie: thrilling, tricksy and with a hefty Amazon effects budget. But scratch the surface of any Ryan story and all of the handwringing morality doesn’t ring true. Also, the film rarely patronises [good], so it is at times opaque, assuming that the audience has watched all of the TV series [not so good]. Nonetheless, Bernstein demonstrates an impressive shorthand between Ryan, Greer and Mike. Miller is fantastic, as are Betty Gabriel and JJ Feild in key roles, and Pierce gives the film more heft than it deserves with his focused performance.

For those who can stomach the depressing tone, global product placement and mindless gunplay, then Jack Ryan: Ghost War is a worthy way to spend time between Bonds.