JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT (2014)

JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT. Kenneth Branagh, dir., featured villain. Adam Cozad, David Koepp, script, based on characters created by Tom Clancy. USA/Russia: Paramount, Skydance Productions "presents" / Paramount (US dist.); see IMDB for details.

Not SF but a high-tech thriller where the spycraft technology is sufficiently advanced to strain credulity. Usefully compared and contrasted with Clancy's 1984 novel The Hunt for Red October and the 1990 film made from it. Where Red October has extended sequences of men contained within the largely mechanical world of a state-of-the-art nuclear submarine, the brief corresponding scenes in SHADOW RECRUIT show a small number of men and at least one woman inside a van surrounded by computer screens and other devices cybernetic. In RED OCTOBER (the movie), the stealth-technology "Caterpillar Drive" propelling the sub "is described as a magnetohydrodynamic system, essentially, 'a jet engine for the water'" (Wikipedia entry); in SHADOW RECRUIT, the Russian threat to the United States is a complex financial scheme to destroy the US dollar, and one that depends, at least cinematically, upon high-speed computer transactions.

5. DRAMA, RDE, 00/I/14