Jack Ryan, Season 2 — Venezuela: Too Little Too Late

Note: Spoilers ahead.

This is another sad depiction of South America as rendered by Hollywood; it took until the last two episodes of Season 2 of Jack Ryan (available on Amazon Prime), unfortunately, for the story to become the least bit realistic. Jack and the remaining members of an American armed team reach a covert Venezuelan government prison camp in the jungle, seeing a mass grave and the remaining political prisoners near death, collapsing even as they were being freed. Meanwhile, the President of Venezuela, Nicolas Reyes, played by Spanish actor Jordi Molla (whom some Westerners might remember as King Philip of Spain in Elizabeth: The Golden Age), in seeing that footage of the camp has been transmitted to media internationally, forces the closure of the polls for the presidential election, soldiers tasked with the duty claiming that his lead against his opponent, Gloria Bonalde (played by Colombiana, Cristina Umaña) is so “unsurmountable” that no more votes need to be considered. Terrorizing the voters with machine-gun fire, they clear the building.

These are the sole scenes that rang the least bit true. Like Netflix’s Triple Frontier, which was supposed to have been about the tri-border region (the borders among Argentina…