Hollywood always goes through its trends, but it's becoming increasingly clear we live in the era of the "series reboot." From Spider-Man to 007, we see tired characters and properties revived with a younger cast, fresher digital effects and about a gazillion more dollars more poured into advertising.
Still, trying this maneuver with the Jack Ryan franchise was always going to be tricky. First off, the superspy was born in the pages of the best-selling Tom Clancy novels from the 1980s, of which Cold War intrigue was an intrinsic part. Secondly, there never really was a Jack Ryan franchise per se — the first film to feature the character was "The Hunt for Red October" (1990), where Alec Baldwin in the Ryan role was a distant second billing to Sean Connery. Harrison Ford scored two hits in a row as Ryan in the early '90s with "Patriot Games" and "Clear and Present Danger," and then nothing until an attempted reboot in 2002 with "The Sum of All Fears," which made the fatal error of putting "Gigli"-era Ben Affleck in the lead.
Kenneth Branagh is a director known best for his Shakespeare adaptations, but he went popcorn with "Thor" and continues that here. Working off a script "based on characters created by Tom Clancy," Branagh tries to update Ryan from the Cold War to the "War on Terror," but half-heartedly: the bad guys are still Russkies, and everyone seems intent on spying like it's 1989.