I read a lot as a kid, certainly more than I do now. In 8th and 9th grade I crushed most of the then-current main Tom Clancy novels. These included The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, The Sum of All Fears, Debt of Honor, and Executive Orders. This was before and at the very beginning of the hugely popular video game series that started with Rainbow Six, which even may be more well-known than their source material.
Part of what made these thrillers so good was incredible realism, to the extent they involved international politics and knowledge of the military and espionage complexes of our government. The joke at the time was that some higher-ups questioned how he could know so much. However it happened, he saw the world as it was and wrote some excellent stories set near the end of the Cold War, then in the 90s with the rise of terrorism and the changing international landscape, and more. The most mind-blowing example was Clancy's premonition, in 1994 and long before 9/11, of terrorists hijacking then crashing commercial airplanes to inflict death and chaos (the ending of Debt of Honor was jaw-dropping).
Most of these stories follow Jack Ryan, initially a history professor then lowly CIA analyst. He's always the smartest guy in the room, he's willing to stand up for himself and take risks, and in a number of cases he's simply in the right place at the right time. He rises through the CIA and eventually holds higher positions. Perhaps I connected with him because that's the type of guy I wanted to be. The novel version of Jack Ryan was bookish and never wanted to go on missions to face horrifying and dangerous circumstances, but he also was willing to do what he knew was right and sometimes it required things beyond what he thought himself capable.
I've seen all the Jack Ryan movies. I'm not including Shadow Recruit (2014) because that's not based on any of Clancy's stories. Though I love Harrison Ford, the best portrayal of Ryan is easily Alec Baldwin's in The Hunt for Red October (1990). In this case the first movie made was also the best. Affleck is fine, even good, in The Sum of All Fears (2002) but it still annoys me they changed the terrorist group of Islamic militants to neo-Nazis. Overall the movies lost steam and luster as they made more, unsurprisingly.
I was conflicted after Amazon purchased the rights to Clancy's work and announced the show, with John Krasinski, called Jack Ryan. It was obviously going to be set in the current day, meaning that nearly everything needed to be heavily adapted or thrown out since the old stories very much rooted in their original era. In the end I didn't make it a priority. Since then my wife has watched at least a season and, while I was in and out, it greatly annoyed me how much they changed the characters themselves. Sure, Jack Ryan is still a CIA analyst and he's still the smartest man in the room, but now he actively desires flying across the world to get the bad guys. Greer, his boss, who always had his back and still does in the show, goes with him! Admiral James Greer from the novels is a high ranking member of the CIA and you barely ever see him not at a desk or in a meeting. But this is now a TV show and the format requires more action, so the main characters go find it over and over. In the end I think this is the problem. The novels feature a character that ends up in a number of crazy events, but they're spaced out and he still always seems like a fish out of water. The TV show version of Jack Ryan is essentially an action hero and that bothers me, even though I greatly want to like Krasinski for the part.
Well that was a lot of set up for what I actually want to talk about, though the rest will be pretty short. The best Clancy novel in my opinion, one without Jack Ryan at all, was clearly Without Remorse. This one is the back story of John Clark, a recurring side character in the Ryan centered stories and a worldly, very capable special operations officer that's regularly all alone in a foreign country. Later he leads the first iteration of the super team Rainbow (comparable to the modern day SEAL Team Six). Without Remorse takes place in the early 70's during the Vietnam War and shows how Clark becomes that man.
It's probably not what you think, as for the most part it's purely about revenge. John Kelly, his given name, recently lost his wife. A former Navy SEAL, he's not sure what's next. One day he picks up a woman and they become involved (this part was probably too much for middle school me). He finds out she's an escaped prostitute and drug mule for a Baltimore area gang. Wanting to get her help, he tries to take her to a rehabilitation center. On the way they're attacked, Kelly is incapacitated, and the woman is captured by her pimp and gang who torture and kill her. After recovering from his sustained injuries, Kelly undertakes a brutal private war on that gang. This is the primary focus of the novel. His vigilante justice does get temporarily interrupted when he's asked to go on a covert mission to rescue POWs in Vietnam. After returning he resumes his rampage. Eventually he gets confronted by the police, fakes his death, and is recruited by the CIA under a new name, John Clark.
The real reason for writing this post today is that Amazon has also adapted Without Remorse as a film, set today and featuring Michael B Jordan, available on Prime April 30. I'll have to give it a chance, as my wife and I both love a good vigilante flick and I'll hope they do the story right. It'll certainly still be revenge themed, though from the ads it's obvious they've otherwise changed quite a bit. Once again I feel justifiably concerned Amazon purchased the rights to use the names of Clancy's stories and characters to simply warp them beyond recognition. In the end, maybe former fans of Clancy aren't the actual target audience for this new stuff. Or maybe I'm just not open minded enough when it comes to certain things. Basically, I don't know what to think, even though in theory I should be really excited.
At the very least, it should be popcorn fare and has Michael B Jordan as an increasingly bankable star.
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