If there were an Oscar for Best Hidden Agenda, it would go to Jack Ryan: The Shadow Recruit (dir. Kenneth Branagh). At a time when regulators and citizens try to hold Wall Street accountable for the 2008 recession and the CIA accountable for torture, Jack Ryan turns Wall Street into a victim and the CIA into a model husband. It does so with all the slick im/plausibility of a thriller—and it uses the Bible to boost its case.
This seemingly nondescript body-count film deploys the Bible, trust in national defenses, and a restored heteronormative relationship in very rote ways to signify national superiority and solidity. It works hard to shore up national sovereignty and to valorize national defenses even as it promotes the economic systems that exceed and undermine national sovereignty. In this, the film becomes a pulpy example of a larger pattern of scriptural citation that obscures and promotes tensions between market forces and nationalism, dynamics I discuss in depth in my book, The Babylon Complex (Oxford University Press, 2014).
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