Jack Ryan: Season Two [Blu-Ray]

Cast: John Krasinski, Wendell Pierce, Noomi Rapace

Release Date: August 4, 2020

A Review By: Kevin Lovell

Disc Rating: 7/10

 

Synopsis:

After tracking a potentially suspicious shipment of illegal arms in the Venezuelan jungle, CIA Officer Jack Ryan, portrayed by John Krasinski (A Quiet Place), heads down to South America to investigate. As Jack’s investigation threatens to uncover a far-reaching conspiracy, the President of Venezuela launches a counter-attack that hits home for Jack, leading him and his fellow operatives on a global mission spanning the United States, UK, Russia, and Venezuela to unravel the President’s nefarious plot and bring stability to a country on the brink of chaos.

Newcomers to ‘Jack Ryan’ will want to strongly consider starting at the beginning due to some continuing story elements and character relationships within. You can also find our review of the first season’s Blu-ray release below!

Jack Ryan: Season One (Blu-ray Review)

The second season of Tom Clancy’s ‘Jack Ryan’ rejoins Ryan (Krasinski) as questions about a mysterious boat with possible criminal ties lead him to once again head out into the field, this time taking him all the way to Venezuela to confront its leader who he suspects has ties to the activities; something that seems to be all but confirmed when a deadly attack is launched on their team. Joining forces with his old boss James Greer (Pierce) and the local CIA station Chief Mike November (Kelly) whose own investigations each appear to be linked to his, the trio’s moves soon instigate a dangerous game of cat and mouse as they fight to uncover the truth while trying to thwart the various attempts on their lives.

The sophomore season of ‘Jack Ryan’ takes our lead to Venezuela for another explosive, exciting and addicting season that tends to focus on the spy and action elements of the series while letting much of the character development and struggle take more of a backseat approach. ‘Jack Ryan’ continues to prove itself as a clever, intense and intriguing television series with outstanding production values that are nearly on-par with many blockbuster action films. While the impressive production and smart writing do wonders to help it continue being something quite special in the world of television, the solid casting choices really seal the deal with the second season featuring a handful of returning individuals including John Krasinski, Wendell Pierce and John Hoogenakker, along with some noteworthy newcomers such as Noomi Rapace, Jordi Mollà and Michael Kelly along with more. Some may be slightly irked by a couple unexplainable absences such as Abbie Cornish who portrayed Jack’s love interest Cathy Mueller in season one (a character that’s also his wife in Clancy’s book series which serves as the show’s inspiration) yet is oddly absent from this season. While the setting could allow for a reason she wouldn’t appear, the complete lack of any reference to her character in addition to Jack directly stating he’s single definitely comes off as strange. Fortunately the powerful story, explosive action and the other great characters in play here help to keep things intriguing enough that you can almost let such things go, at least in the moment.

Overall, season two of ‘Jack Ryan’ delivers another tense, beautifully detailed and often action-packed ride that benefits from high end production, beautiful surroundings on prominent display and a quality of action that’s on par with many big features. Paramount Home Entertainment’s 2-disc Blu-ray release of ‘Jack Ryan: Season Two’ is quite impressive itself, at least in the quality department. Offering up all eight episodes from the show’s sophomore season with gorgeous high definition video presentations and wildly aggressive Dolby Atmos soundtracks for each, it may not have a lot to offer when it comes to bonus content (although ‘Deleted Scene(s)’ from more than half of the episodes are included), those who want to physically own the series should still be incredibly satisfied with the top notch video and audio offerings which alone will probably make it worth a purchase for many fans.

VIDEO:

The Blu-ray release of ‘Jack Ryan: Season Two’ features a full 1080p High Definition presentation with the show’s original 2.00:1 Aspect Ratio on all of the sophomore season’s episodes. The video presentations look wonderful altogether and provide consistently clean, sharp and nicely detailed presentations on every episode of the season, with no notable faults or troubles to be uncovered throughout. They hold up impressively even during the numerous darkly lit, fast moving and heavily populated sequences, never allowing anything onscreen to become negatively affected or rendered indiscernible at any point. Overall, these are great high definition video presentations that should thoroughly please fans of the show who are considering a purchase.

AUDIO:

The Blu-ray release features a Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 channel compatible) soundtrack on all 8 season two episodes. Please note that this review pertains solely to the Dolby TrueHD 7.1 audio presentations. These multichannel soundtracks are once again the star of the show, serving up clean, crisp and frequently hard hitting audio presentations on each episode. They repeatedly take full advantage of all seven available channels in order to send bullets, explosions and vehicle activity along with other action effects throughout the various speakers quite regularly, along with bits of crowd chatter, nature content and plenty more, while always making certain that any dialogue or other audio elements that may be occurring simultaneously remain clean and fully audible throughout. Overall, these are magnificent Dolby Atmos (TrueHD 7.1 compatible) soundtracks that repeatedly surpass expectations while contributing plenty of extra fun and tension to the viewing experience.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

The Blu-ray release of ‘Jack Ryan: Season Two’ includes ‘Deleted Scene(s)’ for five of the second season’s episodes (running approximately 16 minutes in length altogether) which can be found under the ‘Episode Selection’ menus accompanying each applicable episode.

*Please note that the above images are taken from the Blu-Ray and resized. They will additionally suffer quality loss as a result of .jpg compression. Larger versions of each image can be viewed by clicking on the image. All images and content included on this Blu-Ray release are the property of their respective owners.

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Disc Rating: 7/10

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‘Jack Ryan: Season Two’ is Now Available to Own on Blu-ray & DVD from Skydance, Amazon Studios & Paramount Home Media Distribution

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