Amazon Prime Movie Review: Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War

Posted on May 21, 2026 by jjcwn • Posted in Action Movie, Drama • Tagged Chris Pine, Harrison Ford, Jack Ryan, John Krasinski • Leave a comment

The latest installment of the Jack Ryan movie series on Amazon Prime, this time around, is a two-hour movie, not a series. It is a great example of producers trying to “squeeze as much money out of the rock” for a well-known name and franchise that I have ever seen.

The character of Jack Ryan started in 1990, starring Alec Baldwin in “The Hunt for Red October”, and spawned two very good movies movies, “Patriot Games” (1992) and “Clear and Present Danger (1994) starring Harrison Ford, “The Sum of All Fears” (2002) starring Ben Affleck, “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” (2014) and the current one, streaming now on Amazon Prime, “Jack Ryan Ghost War” (2026) starring John Krasinski. Krasinski also starred in 4 seasons of Jack Ryan in Prime in 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023.

This story grabs all that works in the previous Jack Ryan series, starting with the long-time close friendship between Jack Ryan, played by Krasinski, and James Greer, played by Wendell Pierce, where there are scenes of their affection and respect for one another and intense arguments, due to new revelations about cases they have worked on in the past. There are well-done scenes of massive gunfire, car chases, and shootouts inside buildings and cars blowing up. This movie also stars Sienna Miller, who plays an MI6 agent Emma Marlow, and Max Beesley as Liam Crown, who is the evil leader of a criminal organization.

The problem is that there is nothing new in this movie; we have seen it all before in the four Prime series and the previous five movies. In the rush to make more money in the Jack Ryan series, the realization was that name recognition would probably mean that less time would be necessary to write an interesting and innovative screenplay. People will probably want to stream this new movie because of the name “Jack Ryan”; there’s no need to take 18 months to write and then re-write a new screenplay. Let’s make money now.

This unfortunate, slap-together story and then rushing to production is the number one reason why this movie is getting such low marks on Rotten Tomatoes of 45%. I agree with this rating and do not recommend this movie. You are better off watching the older movies or the early Jack Ryan series.

Movie Review: In the Grey

Posted on May 16, 2026 by jjcwn • Posted in Action Movie, Drama • Tagged Eiza González, Guy Richie, Henry Cavill, In the Grey • Leave a comment

The new movie “In the Grey” is one of those rare, below-average January movies that are released in May. This film is another example of several well-known stars agreeing to appear in a bad movie due to a favor, contract, or previous verbal agreement, forcing them to act in a movie with a bad screenplay. This film was both written and directed by Guy Ritchie, and I was surprised by how low-quality this movie is, considering the huge experience Guy Ritchie has as both a screenwriter and director. afsgasdfa

The Grey has five well-known bankable actors, including Henry Cavill, Jake Gyllenhaal, Fisher Stevens, Eiza González, and Rosamund Pike. It is possible that the screenplay below average was on hold for a long time, with money already committed to its production. Then a decision was made to hire these five well-known actors to try to save the box office. Due to the very low 47% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, saving the box office for this movie is highly unlikely.

Eiza Gonzalez plays Rachel, who is an independent operative who is hired to coerce huge debts from very wealthy criminals around the world. She works with mercenaries, played by Gyllenhaal and Cavill, with much of this story explaining how they will try to force a wealthy drug dealer Manny Salazar, played by Carlos Bardem, to pay them 1 billion dollars. The story is erratic, too disconnected, and too convoluted to recommend as an action or drama movie. The acting is just OK, with action scenes that are nothing we have not seen many times before.

I agree with the low 47% Rotten Tomatoes rating and recommend this B-movie for right-to-DVD.

Movie Review: Normal

Posted on April 18, 2026 by jjcwn • Posted in Action Movie, Drama • Tagged Bob Odenkirk, Henry Winkler, Normal • 1 Comment

With Bob Odenkirk’s recent action movies “Nobody” (2021), “Nobody 2” (2025), and now “Normal” about a temporary police Sheriff in the town of Normal, Minnesota, it seems that Odenkirk is starting a franchise of one word crazy action movies that start with the letter “N”.

Normal starts out as a run-of-the-mill, boring police story in a small town, and then later explodes into an insane idea involving a criminal mob from Japan, a small bank with a vault loaded with many gold bars and millions of dollars, with a plot twist impossible to see coming.

This film stars Bob Odenkirk as the temporary sheriff Ulysses Richardson, who has been through a tragic incident and is looking to escape by becoming a temporary Sheriff in the town of Normal, Minnesota. Ulysses runs into many off-the-wall people in the abnormal town of Normal, including the Mayor of the town Mayor Kibner, played by Henry Winkler.

For this third insane Odenkirk action movie, the action scenes do not happen until around the middle of the story, and then a huge explosion of death, gunfire, and destruction as the final climax with the criminal gang from Japan.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings of 77% are mostly correct, but the previous two Odenkirk action movies were better. I agree with this rating and do recommend Normal.