Showrunners Carlton Cuse and Graham Roland have perfectly reimagined Ryan for modern audiences. They certainly couldn’t have found a better actor to play him.
All of the performances in Jack Ryan transform what would be a rather typical military-hero-hunts-nefarious-brown-terrorists yarn into a series that leaves you curious about the fates of a number of unrelated people, including those related to the antagonists. ... It’s a bingeworthy action series led by a superhuman office worker. Need some people to root for? Krasinski, Pierce and Jack Ryan have you covered.
Despite paying cursory service to humanizing its principal characters, Jack Ryan is mostly interested in a battle between broad notions of good and evil. It thrives on the tension of Jack's chess match with bin Suleiman, reducing an entire nation's efforts to combat terror to a personal beef between two archetypes.
Jack Ryan excels at pyrotechnics. Walls, trucks and people explode in spectacular arrays of destruction. Its fight choreography gets muddy, especially when Jack is tussling with some terrorist. ... The most charitable thing that can be said about Krasinski’s performance here is that he looks deeply, deeply tired.
The season’s length strains the effectiveness of its throwback sensibilities, passable action choreography, and formulaic characters—attributes which may be better suited for standalone feature films.