Chasing an assassin

Season 2 of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan on Amazon is an entertaining adventure, with plenty of plot twists and surprises. But the eight-part series is marred by frequent blasphemy, excessive violence, and unnecessary foul language.

In Season 1, a low-level economic analyst battled an Islamist mastermind who used ISIS and Ebola in a quest to destroy America. This season, Jack Ryan fights a corrupt president determined to hang on to power by any means, including election tampering.

Fictional Venezuelan President Nicolás Reyes (Jordi Mollà) lives in luxury while his people suffer from lack of food and jobs. When a visiting U.S. senator of Venezuelan descent is assassinated, Ryan (John Krasinski) becomes determined to find out who was behind the plot. Ryan’s pursuit of justice brings him closer and closer to President Reyes, and mayhem follows as Reyes orchestrates political maneuvers to remove all Americans from the country.

Ryan chases the hired assassin all the way to London, where some of the series’ most gripping moments take place. The murky world of murderers for hire makes it tough to prove who paid for the killing. Back in Venezuela, President Reyes, facing a formidable political opponent, becomes desperate to maintain his power, eventually murdering one of his own relatives.

Krasinski, best known to many as Jim from The Office, has played enough serious roles since that sitcom that it isn’t jarring to see him as a leading man in an action-adventure. It’s refreshing to find a modern drama that presents an American as an uncorrupted hero, courageously standing for justice and the voice of the people. Christian viewers might not be surprised by the series’ on-screen violence, given the subject matter, but the amount of blasphemy makes this a show that I can’t recommend.