Jack Ryan review

All the stuff that's wrong with the new Jack Ryan series on Amazon Prime and why I watched it anyway.

1) Greer is a Muslim.  Why?  What story purpose did this serve?  None that I can think of, but it did serve a political purpose.  If you are going to have a story that has Islamic Jihad as its primary story line, you need to show that NAMALT.  So he's a Muslim.  I can't imagine that they are envisioning a Major Nidal Hasan storyline down the road, so its just pandering.

2) Greer, a (former) CIA station chief, has a rifle in the base attack in E:1 but Ryan, a combat marine infantry officer doesn't have a weapon at all.  Ditto during raid in France, except Ryan has a pistol because the American SpecOps guys along on the raid gives him one.  Just seems to me that if only one of them was going to be armed it would be Ryan, who has experience.  Given the amount of training that SWAT teams go through, however, I wouldn't think they would want anyone they hadn't trained with to be waving a gun around.

3) Maybe I misheard, but what I thought I heard was during shift change in the drone station, referring to the female, black, Air Force drone operator as "black girl".  Just seemed completely out of place and not anything that would have been tolerated when I was in the military twenty five years ago, let alone today (or whenever this was set which is sometime after 2001).

4) Greer "if you pull your weapon to shoot, you shoot" said no experienced or trained person ever.  Greer was telling Ryan that he should have shot at the bad guy, through a crowd of civilians.  I'm going to posit that either the production team doesn't have a technical advisor with law enforcement experience or they just flat out ignored their advisor in this case.

5) Stupid rant presumably designed to show how ignorant people are about Islam.  In E:4 the French police officer rants against Islam.  No rebuttal, just Greer waving his beads and saying "these are to help me when I need restraint".  Again, clearly designed to make a political point.  If you have issues with Islam you are an unthinking redneck because here's the calm Muslim proving you wrong by being the bigger person.  No actual discussion of the issues involved, just stereotypes designed to sway the viewer in one direction.

6) Another political point but this one a little more carefully done.  Ignoring the fact that the vast majority of Muslim refugees flooding Europe are working (and therefore military) age single men, the show depicts the refugees as primarily women, children, and old men or families.  They make the point that the female character, who is the wife of the terrorist leader, and her two daughters, must flee to keep her family safe.  A valid point in this case, but not generally the case as most "refugees" seem to be economic refugees, rather than fleeing abuse or terror.  Of the fighting age men generally not shown in the film, perhaps it would be too much to ask that they take sides in the civil wars of their countries, building a better life for themselves and their families at home, rather than just picking up and leaving.

So, all that being said, on Christmas day, as I sat recovering from surgery and therefore highly limited as to what I could and couldn't do, I watched every single episode of Jack Ryan.  Every time an episode ended, I would get up and walk around a bit, tidy, have a snack, and then find myself inexorably drawn back to the TV for "just one more episode".  By the time I went to bed, Season 1 was behind me and, since Season 2 has not been released yet, I guess I have something to look forward to.

It is highly entertaining, the acting is good, and the story never slows down.  Even the bits that bothered me didn't bother me that much, they were just there.  I highly recommend it.