Back in the Good Old Days of the Cold War, I read the hell out of the original 3 Jack Ryan books, and I love the Harrison Ford movies, considerably less the Baffleck "Sum of All Fears". The spinoff pulp books and shitty videogames, far less so. Amazon's now got "Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan" on Prime, let's see.
Slow start, but obviously a War That Never Ends in Middle-East thing.
Blank-faced drone John Krasinski as Ryan is generically skilled, has war flashbacks while he stares emotionlessly at a ceiling, writes "SQL queries" that pop up graphical displays. He's like someone's shitty PC in Millennium's End RPG, and I don't believe from his walking meatstick "acting" that this Ryan has a PhD in Economics, or even a GED, or really more than a brainstem.
Wendell Pierce (the Bunk!) is promising, but he's playing a last-chance-don't-fuck-this-up bureaucrat section chief, nothing exciting yet.
After a bit, Ryan is Proved Right as in all Jack Ryan stories, and dragged into the field from a party for a rich asshole & his generically pretty but vapid blonde daughter.
Interrogation and the vaguely placed prison are, uh, unpleasant, but nobody's being tortured. Yet. Bombs and guns always get into these, and it's fine but very console-shooter: Indistinct action around a squad shooting aimlessly (because without mouse you can't aim).
It all seems competently produced, poorly acted, and written by very unimaginative frat boys who've played too much Tom Clancy's Rainbow Seven. Long-dead Tom Clancy is the only real writer on the show, and this is "ripped from the headlines" by some necrophiliacs last employed on garbage like Lost.
I'll probably do another couple eps to see if the Bunk does anything good, but I hold little hope unless they replace almost the entire cast and writing room.
★★☆☆☆