Jack Ryan: Ghost War (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

PopEntertainment
5 days ago
3 min read

Updated: 12 hours ago

JACK RYAN – GHOST WAR (2026)

Starring John Krasinski, Wendell Pierce, Michael Kelly, Sienna Miller, Betty Gabriel, Mckenna Bridger, Max Beesley, Douglas Hodge, JJ Feild, Khalid Laith, Diarmuid de Faoite, Dominic Mafham, Bobby Holland Hanton, Tom Johnson, Billy Clements, Alex Brockdorff, James Wright, Geneva Meredith, Luke Donnelly, Adam Bernett, Ikky Kabir and Akbar Kurtha.

Screenplay by Aaron Rabin and John Krasinski.

Directed by Andrew Bernstein.

Distributed by Amazon MGM Studios. 105 minutes. Rated R.

Suspense novelist Tom Clancy’s books about super spy Jack Ryan have gotten quite a ride in Hollywood.

The character has been the subject of six movies and a four-season TV series since 1990. Ryan has been played by such A-list talent as Alec Baldwin (The Hunt for Red October), Harrison Ford (Patriot Games, A Clear and Present Danger), Ben Affleck (The Sum of All Fears), Chris Pine (Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit) and John Krasinski (The Jack Ryan TV series and now the movie Jack Ryan: Ghost War).

Now I’ll admit I’m not exactly up on the Jack Ryan universe. I have never read any of the books. I did see The Hunt For Red October when it was released and thought it was pretty good. I think I saw snippets of the Ford movies on cable, but never really sat down to watch them. I do definitely remember the Affleck movie – it’s hard to forget a movie which climaxes with the nuclear annihilation of Baltimore – but as I recall I found it more disturbing than enjoyable. I’ve never seen Pine or Krasinski in this role, well at least up until watching this made-for-Prime Video film.

It is probably a bad thing that I haven’t seen the series leading into Ghost War, because there are characters and situations here that carry over from the series, so I’m sure that I’d pick up on in jokes and have a fuller understanding of this particular fictional universe. However, Ghost War does work as a stand-alone adventure film.

Is it better than similar films from the Bourne, Mission: Impossible, or even James Bond series? Possibly not, but it’s in the same ballpark. The spy game is a complicated world, with a lot of intrigue, derring-do, gorgeous cities, gorgeous women and spectacular stunts. And Ghost War pulls these off quite competently.

It does feel vaguely like a special two-part episode of a TV series, and I guess to an extent that is exactly what it is. But it’s a special two-part episode of a high-budgeted quality show. And, honestly, perhaps the story would have worked a little better stretched out into another season of the series rather than trying to smash all the action in together at the cost of characterization and background detail.

What’s interesting – and occasionally frustrating – is how Ghost War brushes up against timely political ideas without fully engaging them. The film hints at the moral ambiguity of modern intelligence work, particularly through Wendell Pierce’s character, a man caught between national security and personal ethics. There are also nods to the dangers of privatized warfare and the blurry line between government-sanctioned operations and freelance espionage. But the movie rarely pauses long enough to interrogate these ideas. It gestures toward complexity, then sprints to the next set piece.

Perhaps the biggest problem of Jack Ryan: Ghost War is the way that the main character is presented. Krasinski is likable enough in the role, but he’s playing in such a laid-back, responsible, super-by-the-book way that honestly, he is the least interesting of the four main characters. Much more intriguing are Wendell Pierce’s conflicted and secretive deputy head of the CIA, Michael Kelly’s goofy but competent CIA spook, and even Sienna Miller’s sexy but mysterious and potentially deadly MI6 agent.

The film is slick but slightly sterile as competently directed by TV pro Andrew Bernstein, and while it often does mimic the feel of a big-screen blockbuster, it only rarely captures the pulse. The action is staged cleanly, but sometimes too cleanly. It feels like it was assembled from the “spy thriller starter kit.” It’s all competent, but rarely surprising.

In the end, Jack Ryan: Ghost War is a polished but compressed entry in the franchise – entertaining enough but constrained by its origins as a continuation of the series. It delivers the expected espionage thrills, but without the depth or character focus that apparently made earlier Jack Ryan stories resonate. Fans of the show will find it a respectable coda; newcomers may wonder what all the fuss was about.

Jay S. Jacobs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4ZVFspRn3M