You can always tell when a veteran star has new projects coming up, because their older movies play nonstop on TV. Kevin Costner’s 2003 western “Open Range” — he directed, produced and starred in it — has been playing on Encore Westerns, and then he just won a Best Actor award at the Golden Globes for “Hatfields & McCoys.”
I see he has a bunch of projects coming up, including “Man of Steel” (he plays Jonathan Kent), Luc Besson’s “Three Days to Kill,” and “Jack Ryan.”
Paramount’s “Jack Ryan” hits theaters on Christmas Day 2013, and will thus revive the Tom Clancy character that’s been dormant since Ben Affleck’s portrayal in 2002’s “The Sum of All Fears.”
In “Jack Ryan,” Chris Pine takes the character back to its beginning (yes, he’s playing Jack Ryan AND James T. Kirk – talks about hitting the jackpot!). The injured Marine is recruited by CIA vet William Harper (Kevin Costner) to work as a high-level analyst. The two are pitted against a Russian oligarch (Kenneth Branagh, who also directs) who’s pulling the strings of the financial market and delving into international terrorism with potential global catastrophic results.
According to Pine, Jack Ryan says, “He doesn’t drive great cars, he doesn’t know five different martial arts. He works in the CIA, but he’s a normal guy… thrown into these extraordinary circumstances.”
That’s the reason I love this character. He relies on street smarts rather than muscles.
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