Movies about compliance officers are few and far between. It may surprise you to find Chris Pine playing that role in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.
Jack Ryan is the protagonist in Tom Clancy’s cold war thrillers. I read most of his books back in the 1980s. They were so cold war based I wondered how the story telling would work in the current era where national security is focused more on anti-terrorism. I wonder no more.
Jack Ryan has been through many good actors: Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck. This time its Chris Pine rebooting the character. Ryan joins the Marine Corps after 9/11 interrupts his college career. He’s recruited by Kevin Costner to work on terrorist financing. He goes back to school to finish his PhD in economics and goes to work undercover on Wall Street.
He ends up as a compliance officer at a big Wall Street firm. Of course his role is to look for suspicious activity.
“I’m a compliance officer, I do everything by myself.”
He spots some suspicious activity with a Russian business partner. That moves him from analyst to operative. A compliance officer with a gun. Shoot outs and car chases ensue.
The movie is mediocre. It’s not horrible, just bland. But make your spouse sit through it and maybe, just maybe, he or she will raise an eyebrow, wondering if you are actually an undercover operative.
