Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Potential wasted. This could have been a great series showing us the backstory of Jack Ryan, a character many of us grew up with from Tom Clancy novels or the Harrison Ford and Alec Baldwin films from the 1990s. Ryan has always been an analyst (as he is portrayed in Series 1). In the later chapters (e.g., with Ford) he is still in this role. So, to transform Ryan into some sort of “super spy” is completely discontinuous with the character and franchise. What made Jack Ryan stories so great was that he was not a super spy. Ryan was always out of place, way beyond his experience and expertise (see for example Baldwin’s Ryan boarding a US submarine in Hunt for Red October). Ryan was always stumbling into situations he did not want to find himself in, and it was this incongruence that added so much drama. Yes, Ryan is a Marine, and that contributes to his abilities and some realism in past stories, but he was more importantly a man doing the extraordinary -- and barely surviving -- because of his convictions, his integrity, and his duty to his country. This series has transformed Ryan (who just a couple of years ago was an analyst recovering from a major spinal injury) into: 1. The greatest field agent in the CIA; 2. An SEAL-team-esqe operative -- who can jump into a mission (that requires scaling a moving ship with grappling hooks!) with no briefing or prep. 3. A one-man rescue team who frees a Russian intelligence offer with nothing but a Glock pistol! Absurd. And the complicated relationship with his future wife Catherine Muller -- a great source for character development and relatable drama? Gone. The writing is ridiculous and hacky. --Ryan’s team enters the nuclear research grounds and Ryan remarks, “This is where it all started.” November responds: “Let’s hope it ends better for us.” Really? Was this taken out of “How to Write Spy Dialogue for Beginners”? --The writers have Ryan -- in a split second, as always -- come up with a plan where an Army officer and his sergeant abandon their truck in a tunnel to create a blockade for a nuclear bomb, and then egress ON FOOT. Ryan sees they won’t make it. He has time to: 1. Land the helicopter and disembark; 2. Stop a Humvee and get everyone out; 3. Take the Humvee back into the tunnel; 4. Rescue the officer and sergeant and make it out. Let’s see…wouldn’t it have made infinitely more sense for the Humvee to stop for 30 seconds in the tunnel and pick up the two soldiers. Of course, but Ryan has to always be the unstoppable hero that defies all odds and logic. --A Russian Minister of Defense is surprised by journalists at a high-level diplomatic meeting? As if any minister or politician wouldn’t send an advanced team. Every significant event is predictable. --Rogue Russian agents are about to assassinate Luca? The killer is shot by Ryan. --Any time any other character tells Ryan “don’t do that, that’s too dangerous, etc.” Ryan will go ahead by himself and be right, again. --Any time someone says “We gotta go” when Ryan is looking at a document or a computer, you can be sure that Ryan is, yet again, just about to see something critical that no one else sees. It’s just silly. Amazon desperately wants strong female leads, and I wholeheartedly support their good intentions. However, they don’t know how to write them. The writers’ idea of a strong woman is someone who puts a general in his place -- literally makes him sit down -- with one-liners. This is not toughness. This is sophomoric ego and completely counterproductive in a Situation Room national emergency. The fact is, the writers don’t have enough knowledge or skill -- or maturity? -- to write dialogue for a capable woman in a room full of equally capable men. So they have to resort to one-upmanship. Nina Hoss’s character, Alena, is better but still has the unnecessary tropes about no man being able to tolerate a strong woman while she is simultaneously the leader of a country surrounded by loyal and dedicated men. The acting is, for the most part, competent. That said, Krasinski just doesn’t embody Ryan like Harrison Ford did. With Ford, you had a character that was a kind, gentle, loving father and husband. But when the situation required it, you could see the other side in Ford’s face. You knew just by looking at Ford’s Ryan that this was a man capable of violence. I just don’t get that with this Ryan.