So, Chris Pine, is it? How’re you doing today? Wanna cup of coffee, or perhaps a scone? No? Alrighty then. Look man, I came here to talk to you about your film choices. Now, your Star Trek movies are top notch, brilliant stuff, but is this new film Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit seriously the best thing you could do for yourself?  C’mon, you could do better than that Chris, as could any audience member by avoiding this film entirely.

Jack Ryan (Chris Pine) is just your routine dude, who just so happens to be smart, handsome and gifted in combat, when he’s recruited for a top secret agency. At first, he’s just an undercover analyst, doing things involving numbers and such, when he is sent over to Moscow to check on some suspicious accounts. A couple of kills later, and Jack Ryan is in over his head, and soon realizes that he is all that stands in the way between the free world and chaos.

Now, doesn’t that sound like a fun two hours? Well folks, sorry to disappoint, but it is far, far from fun. In fact, the film immediately gets off on the wrong foot by using 9/11 as a catalyst for Jack Ryan joining the army, and for some reason, the exploitation of one of the most horrifying days this country has ever seen for the sole purpose of a Jack Ryan movie left a sour taste in my mouth. Things go from bad to worse once we meet Ryan’s love interest, played by Keira Knightley, a woman who makes the overly attached girlfriend look well adjusted by comparison. Annoying, grating and just plain disruptive whenever she appears on screen, I really hoped the villain of the movie would kill her off so we wouldn’t have to listen to her character anymore.

Ah yes, the villain of the movie, played by the director of this film, Kenneth Branagh; here is an interesting character that had the potential to liven up this mess. Sadly, they miss the mark here, with this antagonist just being muddled and all over the place instead of menacing. Throughout the course of the movie, Branagh’s baddie beats up doctors, inadvertently quotes Imagine Dragons and uses a lightbulb as a torture device (that lightbulb sequence contains a contender for one of 2014’s worst movie lines FYI). The fact that, despite all those attributes, he’s still not that compelling is more of a detriment to the subpar directing and writing than Branagh’s admittedly gusto performance.

While Kevin Costner, playing the head of Jack Ryan’s spy agency, sits around as a lightning rod for exposition, I had to ask myself that immortal question; if you’re the head of a major spy agency, and you ask your main secret agent to dumb down the information they’ve discovered; should you be the head of a major spy agency? Such plot holes like these are run of the mill for this stupid, just plain idiotic film, which never even manages to come up with any really good action sequences. It shouldn’t have been that hard; come up with some cool action sequences, some fun one-liners, a memorable bad guy and PRESTO! You’ve got a fun action movie and a delightful way to spend a Saturday night. Instead, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit wastes all of it’s cast and crew on a film that is just a shadow of what it could have been.