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Movie trailer: Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

Movie trailer: Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
Published 4 Oct 2013   Follow @SamRoggeveen

Weird that this trailer should emerge just after news of author Tom Clancy's death emerges.

The Jack Ryan character first came to life in Clancy's debut novel, The Hunt for Red October, a cracking thriller which led to a better-than-average movie. Since then the connection between Clancy's best-selling books and the movies they spawned has become gradually looser, and now we get what looks like a cliche-riddled, by-the-numbers Hollywood spy actioner which claims only to be 'based on the characters' Clancy created. There's barely a hint of the geo-political and military-strategic themes Clancy focused on, and which his readers seemed to love.

Clancy was never a great writer, but he took world politics and military strategy seriously, and audiences responded. A shame Hollywood has not followed.



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