Jack Ryan: Ghost War Review — Krasinski’s Best Yet?

John Krasinski has now played Jack Ryan longer than anyone else — four seasons on Prime Video, and now a feature film — and Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War makes a strong case that he’s also the best version of the character since Harrison Ford suited up back in 1992. Whether the movie surrounding him is worthy of that performance is a slightly more complicated question.

The film picks up after the events of the series’ final season, with Ryan having retired from the CIA and stepped into the private sector. When CIA Deputy Director James Greer (Wendell Pierce) is pulled back into action by the re-emergence of a rogue black-ops network known as Starling, he calls on the one man he trusts: Jack Ryan. Contractor Mike November (Michael Kelly) joins the mission, and the three soon find themselves partnered with razor-sharp MI6 officer Emma Marlowe (Sienna Miller) as the operation takes them from Dubai to London and beyond. Along the way, Ryan learns more about his mentor Greer than he ever bargained for.

At 105 minutes, Ghost War is a brisk, globetrotting action ride — a boat chase through Dubai’s waters, a kinetic car chase through London’s streets, and a high-stakes operation inside a Dubai skyscraper. It’s ambitious, stunt-heavy, and moves fast. Maybe too fast, depending on who you ask.

The Case For Ghost War

For fans who’ve followed the series, there’s a lot to reward here. Krasinski co-wrote the screenplay with Aaron Rabin, and the two didn’t adapt any specific Tom Clancy novel — which gave them room to build something original while staying true to the character’s DNA. The film draws on subplots seeded across all four seasons of the Prime Video series, particularly Greer’s past and his connection to the film’s villain, Liam Crown (Max Beesley). You can watch Ghost War cold without having seen a single episode, but those who did will feel the weight of what’s at stake in a way that newcomers simply won’t.

The personal stakes are closer in spirit to Patriot Games than to the nuclear-submarine-level world-ending threats of some earlier entries. That’s a deliberate choice, and it mostly works. Krasinski’s Ryan has always been defined by his moral clarity — the analyst who stumbles into danger and refuses to compromise — and Ghost War tests that in interesting ways. In a recent interview with MovieWeb, Krasinski was asked whether Jack still agrees with something Greer told him in Season 1: “There’s no version of the job that doesn’t require compromise if you want to make a real difference.” Ryan famously pushed back on that idea then. Does he still?

“That might be the best question I’ve ever been asked about this franchise,” Krasinski said. “I think, to me, it is ‘no,’ I don’t think he feels that anymore. He doesn’t push back because he’s lived through it. The real gift for Jack is learning what he thought was terrorizing was that the world lives in a gray area. But really, what you learn is that greatness comes from the people who are able to maintain their moral compass in a grey area, which is how you really make a difference.”

That evolution is visible on screen. Krasinski’s Jack Ryan thinks before he acts — even when the film is pushing him to move faster. One standout moment has him pausing mid-operation to process a discrepancy, and it’s quietly one of the movie’s best scenes. It’s a reminder that Ryan’s real weapon has always been his mind, not his fists.

The supporting cast brings plenty. Wendell Pierce gives the franchise its emotional core, and a line he delivers to Ryan — “Walking away from the darkness isn’t the same as walking into the light” — lands with the weight of everything these two characters have been through together. Michael Kelly’s Mike November is looser and funnier than ever, serving as welcome comic relief without losing his edge. And Sienna Miller smartly underplays Marlowe, giving the character enough intelligence and skepticism that she never feels like a placeholder. There’s real chemistry between her and Krasinski, even if it stays strictly professional.

Where It Falls Short

The more critical read is that Ghost War mistakes escalation for depth. What made the Prime Video series genuinely compelling wasn’t just the action — it was the politics, the procedure, the moral friction of watching a fundamentally decent man navigate systems built on secrecy and compromise. That takes time. Eight hours of television time, to be specific.

Squeezed into 105 minutes, a lot of that texture disappears. The first half of the film is exposition-heavy, and while it picks up the pace before the midpoint, conversations and character beats get hurried along in service of the next plot development. Ryan’s love interest Dr. Cathy Mueller (Abby Cornish) doesn’t appear, though she gets a name-check. Betty Gabriel’s CIA Director Elizabeth Wright is in briefly. Pierce, central to the plot, doesn’t get nearly the screen time his role in the series earned him.

Director Andrew Bernstein — a series veteran who’s also worked on The Americans and The Outsider — handles the action sequences competently, but for a franchise that once had filmmakers like John McTiernan and Phil Noyce behind the camera, there’s a noticeable absence of visual personality. Nothing here approaches the slow-burn dread of the convoy ambush in Clear and Present Danger. The action is serviceable, but rarely surprising.

Krasinski himself acknowledged the challenge of the format. “I love that the series was able to get to spend so much time with the characters,” he said, “because you care, and you get to have moments that I would never have been able to have in the show. If I was adversarial with Greer in Episode 2, how would we get back in 8? But you’re allowed to do that in a movie, because that’s what a real family does. Sometimes, you have a fight at Thanksgiving, and you keep moving on.”

It’s a generous way to frame the tradeoff — and he’s not wrong. The movie genuinely earns its emotional moments between Ryan and Greer precisely because of the history built across four seasons. But it also leans on that history more than it builds on it.

A Franchise That’s Just Getting Started

The premiere on May 15 at Regal Times Square felt like a victory lap. Krasinski arrived with wife Emily Blunt by his side, with Sienna Miller and partner Oli Green, Betty Gabriel, Max Beesley, and JJ Feild also in attendance. For a franchise that spent years as a streaming series, there was something fitting about the whole cast showing up for a proper theatrical-style premiere.

The ending of Ghost War is clearly designed to open doors — setting up sequels that could eventually bring Jack Ryan closer to the political heights he reaches in Clancy’s novels. Fans of the Ryanverse will catch echoes of Rainbow Six in some of the military action beats, and the film’s final moments leave plenty of room to grow.

Whether Ghost War is a great Jack Ryan movie or just a good one probably depends on what you came for. As a showcase for Krasinski’s command of the role, it’s the most complete and entertaining film version of the character in over thirty years. As a story, it’s one that wanted more room than it got.

“Walking away from the darkness isn’t the same as walking into the light,” Greer warns him. With any luck, the next one gives them the time to actually find it.

Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War premieres May 20 on Prime Video.