Early on in Prime Video’s highly anticipated Jack Ryan: Ghost War, our titular hero — played earnestly by John Krasinski — is running through New York City streets when two black SUVs suddenly start chasing him down. It’s exciting; Jack is moving fast, ducking through shady alleys and cutting through a restaurant as if his past is trying to catch up with him, but this scene is the film’s sadder reality. Once the identity of who is behind the chase is revealed, it’s accompanied by the realization that this sequel is only dangerous and intense on the surface of its 105 minutes.
That doesn’t mean the follow-up to the wildly popular four-season series is wholly bad; Krasinski is still charming and commanding as Jack, while WendellPierce and MichaelKelly as Greer and Mike, respectively, remain essential to this world. But even with the right pieces in place, Jack Ryan: Ghost War doesn’t evolve into a sharp continuation. While the pace is slick and fast, the story feels weirdly hollow in places where it should hit harder. For a franchise built around moral compasses and buried secrets, this return to the small screen after three years feels less like a high-stakes event and more like a mediocre TV movie with a few good car chase scenes and stunts.
What Is ‘Jack Ryan: Ghost War’ About?
Three years after Jack Ryanended on Prime Video, Jack Ryan: Ghost War opens with a covert operation in Dubai that goes horribly wrong, but the mission drops enough breadcrumbs to pull Jack back into the picture, courtesy of James Greer (Pierce), who needs him on an errand. Returning isn’t easy, as Jack is just trying to live a normal life after stepping away from the CIA. Yet, part of that new reality is that he and Cathy (AbbieCornish) never worked out. As a fan of the books and films growing up, it’s a confusing turn for the plot, especially as their relationship seemed to be one of the few things grounding him outside the agency in Season 4.
Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz Which Action Hero Would Be Your Perfect Partner? Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt
Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.
🎖️Rambo
🍸James Bond
🏺Indiana Jones
🔧John McClane
🎭Ethan Hunt
01
You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner? The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.
02
You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel? How you get there is half the mission.
03
You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do? This is when you find out what someone is really made of.
04
The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest? Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.
05
How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission? Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.
06
Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them? The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.
07
Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do? Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.
08
What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace? A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.
09
Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with? No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.
10
It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now? The last question is the most honest one.
Your Partner Has Been Assigned Your Perfect Partner Is…
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Rambo
Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
James Bond
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
Indiana Jones
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
John McClane
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Ethan Hunt
Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
Now, Jack is reluctantly pulled back into the world of espionage, with Mike November (Kelly) joining him. Things start as a simple courier mission, but it quickly unravels into something bigger after a key contact is killed before Jack can get real answers. Forced to team up with MI6 officer Emma Marlow (SiennaMiller), the trio learns about Starling, a resurrected black-ops unit tied to Greer’s past and a mission in Karachi that refuses to stay dead. In their way is also a mysterious and cold terrorist named Crown (MaxBeesley), who has no remorse for Greer and the U.S., threatening to blow up buildings, bring down American intelligence, and the usual from a buffet of ‘90s movie menus.
Together, Jack, Mike, and Emma follow the trail through Dubai, London, and Washington, with some interesting ad placements that are at times distracting and unintentionally funny in a way only modern streaming movies can be. As the threats escalate for Jack and his team, Ghost War pushes Jack into a rather personal mission, forcing him to reckon with Greer’s secrets while questioning how much of the life he left behind he can truly escape.
‘Jack Ryan: Ghost War’ Struggles at Its Core
Image via Amazon MGM Studios
As a film that moves well and never drags with action and pace, it’s surprising to see that the story itself is not strong enough. Though it’s written by Krasinski alongside Jack Ryan series writer Aaron Rabin and A House of Dynamite’s Noah Oppenheim, Ghost War feels surprisingly thin. It has the look of a serious espionage thriller, but not the depth. The film gestures toward bigger conversations about post-9/11 intelligence work, torture tactics, and government outreach, but it never says anything new or especially thoughtful. Instead, it leans more heavily into terrorist-threat tropes than the series usually did, which is unfortunate because Jack Ryan has often been more careful than that.
While Jack Ryan was never perfect in its handling of geopolitics, it did at least try to complicate Jack’s world; by contrast, Ghost War seems more comfortable flattening the series’ strengths. The show succeeded in being a smart weekly hour that often avoided narrative shortcuts in the realm of terrorist threats, but its adrenaline-driven suspense now frames the attackers and stakes in a way that emphasizes immediate action over political nuance. This convention also leans heavily into predictability, whether it’s seeing a double-cross from a mile away or using a fan-favorite character’s fate as an unnecessary (and somewhat rushed) plot device. None of this makes it unwatchable, but it is frustrating, chipping away at a part of the legacy the show built for characters to exist outside of Jack’s orbit.
Every Season of ‘Jack Ryan,’ Ranked
‘Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan’ was Amazon’s premier action series. With its fourth season being its last, how do they all rank?
Additionally, there is something oddly rushed about the way Ghost War handles Jack’s life. Between a non-existent Cathy and a chemistry-less dynamic with Miller’s Emma, the film wants to complicate his personal world without giving either relationship enough room to actually mean something. So much of that depth (or lack thereof) feels like bullet points that are only contextualized once we see him thrown back into the job, letting all the action do the talking.
To be fair, some of that action does work. There are some strong car chases, like Greer tracking the big bad British villain down the streets of London or the exciting shootout in Dubai that serves as a reminder why this franchise has lasted as long as it has. Yet the action can only carry the movie so far when the writing feels stale. As fans of the show will recognize, the best version of Jack Ryan understood that the action always hit harder when the ideas behind it had some weight. Instead, Ghost War mostly delivers explosions in pretty places.
‘Jack Ryan: Ghost War’s Engaging Cast Keeps the Film Charming
If there is one place where Jack Ryan: Ghost War works, it’s with its cast. Krasinski still has a firm and fun handle on Jack, and there’s something equally appealing about how exhausted this version of his character is in the film. No longer the young analyst pulled into the field, this is a man whose trust in the system has faltered a bit. Krasinski, with all his earthy charm and enthusiasm, plays that weariness well, even when the movie does not give him the strongest material.
Kelly is, as always, a highlight as Mike November. We get to see his usual character quirks from the previous seasons in this, which is a nice little nod to the show’s roots. The franchise is always better for him being in it, and Kelly has such a natural grip on Mike’s dry humor and mercenary exhaustion that it’s pure joy seeing him in any scene. Kelly’s dynamic with Krasinski remains one of the most enjoyable parts of the story, and Ghost War continually leans into their characters’ shenanigan-filled bromance. Meanwhile, Pierce continues to bring the gravitas and grit as Greer. Even when the writing around him is not as sharp as it should be, Pierce gives his character a lived-in heaviness. The film’s strongest emotional material probably belongs to him, especially as Starling forces Greer to face what he once helped bury.
Miller is also a strong addition as MI6’s Emma Marlowe, even if Ghost War doesn’t always know what to do with her. Emma has the right sharpness for this world, and Miller gives her enough confidence that the potential makes you wish she’d been given a more interesting arc. Joining Miller is also the striking and equally confident BettyGabriel, reprising her role as Elizabeth Wright from Seasons 3 and 4 of the series, now serving as CIA Director. With her immense range, Gabriel possesses a clarity and quiet force that reminds us how much the series gains when it brings strong, thoughtfully written female characters into Jack’s world.
That’s what makes Ghost War so frustrating, because it clearly knows what it has with this cast, but doesn’t know how to use them. With everyone’s charm and confidence making it watchable and, at most, a way to pass the time on a lazy afternoon, there is some comfort in seeing Jack, Greer, and Mike back in action. The film also has plenty of slick set pieces, but nostalgia also isn’t the same as momentum. Ghost War wants to feel like a bigger, sharper return for the franchise, but it too often settles for the safest version of itself.
Jack Ryan: Ghost War premieres May 20 on Prime Video.
Release Date
May 20, 2026
Runtime
105 Minutes
Director
Andrew Bernstein
Pros & Cons
Ghost War moves quickly and rarely drags, making it an easy and engaging enough watch for longtime fans.
The film’s globe-trotting locations give the movie a cinematic feel despite its streaming-thriller limitations.
John Krasinski still makes Jack Ryan compelling, balancing exhaustion, charm, and old-school heroism well.
The script leans too heavily into generic spy-thriller tropes instead of the smarter political nuance of the show.
If you watch close enough, several twists are predictable early on.
The movie gestures toward bigger themes about intelligence work but never says anything especially meaningful.
Miller and Krasinski lack romantic chemistry, making their dynamic feel forced rather than emotionally compelling.
