For the longest time, John Krasinski was known as Jim Halpert from The Office — one of those perfect unions of actor and role that made one synonymous with the other. The character of Jim embodied a homely charm that easily endeared him to viewers, and his likability and relatability played a big part in the success of the series.
Cut to present day, and Krasinski has deftly navigated a career shift, currently leading one of the best ongoing action series as the titular Jack Ryan. It was a move no one saw coming. Six years after he first appeared in a serious action role with 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, callbacks to his Jim Halpert era remain incessant. But nobody has doubted or second-guessed the conviction with which he stepped into this new avatar.
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It wasn’t simply that Krasinski turned out to be a good action hero. Especially since the Jack Ryan series was released, it has been more and more apparent that he brought something more to the genre, a grounded authenticity that seamlessly carried over from his days in The Office. It was no happy accident either; speaking about his Jack Ryan role with Variety, he has displayed personal awareness of what the character means for the times:
Given his self-awareness about how his action roles interact with the cultural zeitgeist, his relatively small filmography within the genre suddenly appears much more meaningful. Krasinski’s action hero avatar effectively begins to look like the consolidation of the spirit of the times, a natural progression of the genre that is epitomized by a single actor.
The Death of the Movie Star
Tri-Star Pictures
The image of the action hero has certainly taken a loud trajectory, from its days of hyper-masculine, over-the-top characters like Rambo to today. This change can be seen in the biggest action hits of the past half-century. Action movies in the 80s were brimming with larger-than-life characters who appeared to be near-invincible. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone were some of the most bankable stars, and their movies found success based on their star power. It was only natural for fans to conflate their characters with their real-life personas.
By the 90s, the action genre was beginning to make space for a different kind of film, with the release of crime dramas like Heat being celebrated alongside the best days of the Terminator franchise. One movie firmly solidified this outlying trend as the new direction of Hollywood action: The Bourne Identity. By all appearances, it was a risky movie. Director Doug Liman had only worked with indie productions until that point, and had a radically different view of what the movie should be like.
The movie managed to not just be a successful hit, but also single-handedly redefined Hollywood action. The Bourne Identity wasn’t led by an invincible hunk, destroying everything in its path. Rather, it was led by an unassuming hero who was brimming with the same mortal anxieties as everyone else. His responses to life-or-death circumstances were much the same as it would have been for any one of us. Casting Matt Damon as a lethal CIA operative was certainly an unusual move. But he brought a human, relatable aspect to the character that suddenly multiplied the emotional stakes for the viewer.
The original Bourne trilogy introduced a new set of fundamentals for action cinema, one that has slowly taken center stage in the past few years. Nowadays, only good, compelling writing earns an action hero any kind of currency within pop-culture. Even the well-loved superheroes of the MCU are more character-driven, and less about bombastic, hypermasculine personas. In the same vein, The Gray Man missed the mark despite the hype, for want of better writing and more memorable characters.
The New Template of Cinematic Action
Universal Pictures
The Bourne Identity also employed a radical new template of cinematic action, foregoing outlandish stunt set pieces for a more intimate style of action that was raw, visceral, and realistic. The impact of this new style of cinematic action on the spectator was undeniable. Fight scenes in the movie were far grittier than anything seen before, foregoing the choreographed beautification for a more tactical style that oozes terror.
The emotional power of this new style of action notwithstanding, it also simply looked cool, and hit the mark for audiences as well as other filmmakers. Action movies these days broadly follow the template set by The Bourne Identity. One can expect any major release in the action genre to be grounded to some degree in realistic fighting styles, and this sense of realism has become essential for fans of the genre.
Some movies go one step further and use action scenes to flesh out their characters in greater detail — similar to how Doug Liman did for Jason Bourne. It isn’t uncommon for fans of the MCU to point out character continuities that are sketched out exclusively in the superheroes’ unique fighting styles (as evidenced, for example, by the Reddit thread, Movie Details).
It wouldn’t be a far cry to say that audiences today have come to expect more from action scenes than plain old explosions. They have become an integral part of meaning creation within movies, and are expected to reveal more about characters and the world that they inhabit.
The Chosen One
By the time Krasinski appeared in his first action role, many of these trends within the genre had become commonplace. His first major action movie appearance was in the 2016 movie 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. Ironically, the movie was actually directed by Michael Bay — the flag-bearer of classic Hollywood action in the 21st Century. But as noted by NPR, the historical basis of the film kept Bay from indulging in his worst instincts. 13 Hours was a riveting account of the Benghazi incident shown from the perspective of the military contractors who fought back.
Bay brought his penchant for grand action set pieces and put it to good use, thoughtfully developing the movie’s action sequences with a palpable sense of tension while inserting many meaningful moments in between. Krasinski’s character is used as the main narrative perspective, and he also reflects the emotional experiences of the former soldiers who participated in that incident. He performed the role with a particular nuance; a breadth of expression that enlivened the moments of confessions and subtle overwhelm that were present in between scenes of intense firefights.
Paramount Pictures
Somewhere within that performance, it’s possible to sense traces of the same qualities that made Jim Halpert so likable. Although they’re both far and apart from each other, both roles mirror the audience’s own emotional responses, in some fashion — Jim, as the sole voice of reason in a wacky workplace, and 13 Hours’ Jack Silva as the veteran who is deeply affected by the scenes of violence playing out around him. By reaching out to a personal point of connection with the role at hand, Krasinski seemed able to produce performances that seemed grounded and relatable. You could see yourself in the place of Jim Halpert, and in the place of Jack Silva.
He went through a similar process of personal connection with the role when he decided to direct and star in A Quiet Place. He shared to IGN that the movie is a metaphor for parenthood, and that he was inspired to take on the movie after the script ignited his personal fears as a parent: “I connected more personally to the plight of the family than to the fact that it was a scary movie. Because what I learned on The Office was that comedy and drama come from the same place. So I feel the same when it comes to making people laugh, cry, or be scared. It all comes from the same place, and you just place the truth of the situation and I don’t think there’s anything more harrowing than the situation they’re going through." This inspiration reflects well in the movie — more specifically, in the physicality of his performance, which is alight with an intense desperation throughout.
The Everyman Action Hero
Prime Video
While the audience readily accepted Krasinski’s transformation from the affable Jim Halpert to the star of an award-winning horror film, it was the Prime Video series Jack Ryan that established him as a bonafide action hero. The character itself was a well-established one in Hollywood, based on the popular Tom Clancy novels and having previously been portrayed by four major stars on the big screen. And while Krasinski claims to fondly remember his first time watching a Jack Ryan movie, he once again brought his own unique take on the character.
Starting with the books, Jack Ryan has always been an Everyman — it’s the core logic that unifies the character. While previous portrayals of him touched upon this origin to different degrees, especially with his beginnings as a CIA analyst, all of them ran afoul of this portrayal and went with more inventive characterizations. For Krasinski, however, it was his relatability that really allowed him to connect with the character. Showrunners Carlton Cuse and Graham Roland had similar thoughts that led them directly to him.
Casting the perfect actor for Jack Ryan was critical for them, and they knew that they needed someone who could embody the character’s geeky intelligence while also being charming and relatable. They found it in heaps across Krasinski’s run at The Office. Meanwhile, his work in 13 Hours proved that he had the physicality needed for the role as well. Krasinski appeared as the perfect candidate to fulfill the vision they had for the Jack Ryan series.
The end result was a genuinely sophisticated protagonist who was many shades at once. Krasinski’s Jack Ryan answered the call for the perfect modern-day hero — someone who wants to do the right thing, and pulls it off not by some magical powers, but by his own wits and instinct. He’s far from invincible and extraordinarily vulnerable, and it is this power to feel so deeply for others that always sets him on the inexorable path to do the right thing. All throughout, Krasinski has continued to shine with his immense breadth of expression, bringing out his characters’ inner struggles in a way no other action star does, and crafting a powerful new image of the action hero along the way.
