Some would argue that if you had seen one Tom Clancy movie or read one of the books you had seen and read them all. This sums it up in essence and this is how you should approach watching this movie. Temper your expectations. We are actually off to a quite decent start, following John on his mission to extract a CIA asset from hostile grounds. The mission goes sideways in a way due to incomplete briefing, making the viewer suspicious of the real intentions of some of those operatives? Double agent, red herring?
I won’t spoiler if for you here on the other hand there isn’t really much to spoiler and these movies come as formulaic as they can possibly get. After the initial mission the movie basically goes into autopilot mode and it’s downhill from there on out.
Still, you get decent action, good stunts and an overall polished production, Amazon Studios does have the cash, it shows. You get a popular spy franchise presented in an easily digestible format despite the fact that it tries to shock you “without remorse”, it does not succeed to do so at any point in time, if anything all those extreme measures seem forced and orchestrated. Maybe that is the point, maybe it points towards the forced and orchestrated truth of today, where presidents can call leaders from other countries “killer” on national television without any consequence, seemingly.
We have been desensitized by reality, esp. this past year, to a degree where we have become numb and non receptive to the attempts to shock us. We don’t care about any of the characters, we probably wouldn’t care either way and we are just going through the motions of crossing off all check boxes of a mindless, yet decently crafted action movie. Be honest, were you really shocked that they executed a pregnant woman in her sleep in her own home while her husband conveniently escaped execution because he was doing some late night sofa headphone music listening? And moreover, once the power is cut the laptop which he used for listening shuts down only seconds afterwards. If I were to start taking apart all the plot points along the way there would be no plot left and just a very simple linear string of events that you follow along.
I can say without remorse that this is a movie you can skip. It’s decent enough I guess to give it a casual watching if you feel inclined to do so. On the other hand, you could also use this time to watch a really good spy movie… they do exist! This is not one of them.
