Krasinski, Wahlberg, and Hanks: Streaming’s Comeback Kings of Thrill

Max Sterling, 1/25/2026Explore the resurgence of action-thrillers from the mid-2000s in the streaming realm, featuring John Krasinski, Mark Wahlberg, and Tom Hanks. Discover how nostalgia and competent protagonists offer viewers comfort and resolution amid chaos, turning beloved films into modern cult classics.

Take Krasinski for starters, forever haunted by his “Jim Halpert” past, but now stubbornly recast as America’s favorite analyst-turned-action-hero. Once the default prankster in Scranton, now armed with a PowerPoint deck of global crises, he leads Prime Video’s Jack Ryan with a sort of slightly-harried gravitas, toggling between moral dilemmas and the quiet allure of concise storytelling. No, the world probably wasn’t clamoring for another Tom Clancy adaptation, but Prime Video disagreed; now, Jack Ryan perches among the streaming giants—seventh place, nipping at the heels of trendier fare like Fallout and, incredibly, MrBeast. Perhaps it says something about the state of things in 2025: viewers burnt out on over-quipped superhero fatigue now find solace in dossiers and surveillance footage, craving the old-fashioned heroics of spreadsheet-savvy crusaders and rain-soaked deadline chases.

Critics, of course, remain split: an 80% Rotten Tomatoes score suggests admiration, if not outright devotion. Reacher still crowds the top spot—those biceps do tend to draw a crowd, apparently—but Ryan’s calculated blend of brainpower and measured violence seems to hit a particular sweet spot, especially for grownups who like their espionage with a whiff of the plausible.

Not that soul-searching masterminds have the scene to themselves. Wahlberg’s Shooter, a work that’s less about nuance and more about how many ways one can spell "grit," roars its way up Pluto TV’s charts. Here, Wahlberg—named Bob Lee Swagger, a title fit for a rodeo or a barbecue sauce—embodies the kind of antihero who answers every question with a sardonic look and a loaded rifle. Antoine Fuqua, never one to shy from slow-motion bravado, delivers a film crammed with grizzled dialogue and the sort of industrial paranoia that could only have emerged in the Bush era. If the critics yawned in ’07 (47% on Rotten Tomatoes—a cold splash), viewers have since staged a grassroots redemption: with an 80% audience score, Swagger may be a meme now, but it’s one watched on repeat.

What’s peculiar is this movie’s rebrand as a postmodern civics lesson. Wahlberg, with a wink more than a straight face, once suggested Shooter might actually get someone to head out and vote—as though surviving a government frame job is the ultimate get-out-the-vote campaign. For a scene now, that idea almost plays; 2025 politics being what they are, the line between shooter and senator feels a little thinner every year.

And what of Tom Hanks, the once-and-future American Everyman, now spotted sprinting through cryptic cathedrals in The Da Vinci Code? This trilogy—recently revived on Peacock and sitting comfortably beside its spinoffs, Angels & Demons and The Lost Symbol—remains a peculiar Rube Goldberg machine of art history, leaps in logic, and pure blockbuster bombast. Never mind that Inferno is absent (no word on whether that’s a mercy or a snub). Hanks himself has spoken about the project with the sort of bemused candor rare for marquee stars; according to him, “all sorts of hooey” pretty much sums up the Code’s forensic relationship to reality.

Box office numbers, even two decades later, still speak in booming tones ($760 million worldwide never hurts). However, the critics were less forgiving—27% on Rotten Tomatoes, which means Shooter, at least, wins on meritocracy if one trusts the masses. Oddly enough, for a film accused of being heavy on pulp and light on plausibility, it’s managed to cement itself as an enduring pop culture artifact: its symbolism, both sacred and absurd, continues to invite debates, docuseries, and the occasional protest outside a midnight screening.

What unites these streaming revenants isn’t just nostalgia, though of course that’s part of the draw. There’s an underlying faith in the steady hands of a competent protagonist: the analyst untangling global chaos, the sniper weaving through betrayal, the professor solving puzzles that would shame escape room designers. These old-school narratives, for all their melodrama and convenient moral clarity, create a strange sense of comfort—if not quite order, then at least the possibility of resolution. Sometimes, one suspects, viewers just want the reassurance that, for a couple hours at least, secrets can be revealed and villains can be put in their place.

No wonder the streaming industry has turned back-catalog action into a perennial harvest. These movies and series aren’t merely being recycled; they’re treated as rituals, familiar stories rewatched as a way of channeling anxieties into neatly-packaged catharsis. There’s something oddly communal about knowing that, somewhere, hundreds of thousands are also revisiting these tales—alone, together, in the strange glow of living room screens.

In the end, the rising tide of Jack Ryan, Shooter, and The Da Vinci Code says as much about collective yearning as it does about Hollywood’s penchant for the tried-and-true. Whether driven by skepticism, nostalgia, or sheer boredom with algorithmic novelty, the audience keeps seeking stories of lone figures wrangling clarity from chaos, one dossier or treasure map at a time.

That’s the secret sauce, really. Streaming, for all its innovation, thrives on circles: yesterday’s heroes are tomorrow’s top picks, and the digital campfire keeps burning, feeding off the old magic, one “Continue Watching?” at a time.

There’s a certain poetry—albeit the popcorn-munching kind—in how action-thrillers from yesterday refuse to stay buried. These stories, once side-eyed by critics and worshipped by legions of remote-wielding fans, have become phoenixes of the streaming age, rising yet again across endless home pages. It’s as if the grand algorithm itself cannot resist a familiar flavor, coaxing Mark Wahlberg, John Krasinski, and Tom Hanks back into the pop culture conversation, transforming the Netflix queue into a veritable parade of mid-2000s comfort food for the soul. Ask anyone recently attempting to line up a “dad fiction” movie night—nostalgia isn’t just in fashion, it’s running the place.Take Krasinski for starters, forever haunted by his “Jim Halpert” past, but now stubbornly recast as America’s favorite analyst-turned-action-hero. Once the default prankster in Scranton, now armed with a PowerPoint deck of global crises, he leads Prime Video’s Jack Ryan with a sort of slightly-harried gravitas, toggling between moral dilemmas and the quiet allure of concise storytelling. No, the world probably wasn’t clamoring for another Tom Clancy adaptation, but Prime Video disagreed; now, Jack Ryan perches among the streaming giants—seventh place, nipping at the heels of trendier fare like Fallout and, incredibly, MrBeast. Perhaps it says something about the state of things in 2025: viewers burnt out on over-quipped superhero fatigue now find solace in dossiers and surveillance footage, craving the old-fashioned heroics of spreadsheet-savvy crusaders and rain-soaked deadline chases.Critics, of course, remain split: an 80% Rotten Tomatoes score suggests admiration, if not outright devotion. Reacher still crowds the top spot—those biceps do tend to draw a crowd, apparently—but Ryan’s calculated blend of brainpower and measured violence seems to hit a particular sweet spot, especially for grownups who like their espionage with a whiff of the plausible.Not that soul-searching masterminds have the scene to themselves. Wahlberg’s Shooter, a work that’s less about nuance and more about how many ways one can spell "grit," roars its way up Pluto TV’s charts. Here, Wahlberg—named Bob Lee Swagger, a title fit for a rodeo or a barbecue sauce—embodies the kind of antihero who answers every question with a sardonic look and a loaded rifle. Antoine Fuqua, never one to shy from slow-motion bravado, delivers a film crammed with grizzled dialogue and the sort of industrial paranoia that could only have emerged in the Bush era. If the critics yawned in ’07 (47% on Rotten Tomatoes—a cold splash), viewers have since staged a grassroots redemption: with an 80% audience score, Swagger may be a meme now, but it’s one watched on repeat.What’s peculiar is this movie’s rebrand as a postmodern civics lesson. Wahlberg, with a wink more than a straight face, once suggested Shooter might actually get someone to head out and vote—as though surviving a government frame job is the ultimate get-out-the-vote campaign. For a scene now, that idea almost plays; 2025 politics being what they are, the line between shooter and senator feels a little thinner every year.And what of Tom Hanks, the once-and-future American Everyman, now spotted sprinting through cryptic cathedrals in The Da Vinci Code? This trilogy—recently revived on Peacock and sitting comfortably beside its spinoffs, Angels & Demons and The Lost Symbol—remains a peculiar Rube Goldberg machine of art history, leaps in logic, and pure blockbuster bombast. Never mind that Inferno is absent (no word on whether that’s a mercy or a snub). Hanks himself has spoken about the project with the sort of bemused candor rare for marquee stars; according to him, “all sorts of hooey” pretty much sums up the Code’s forensic relationship to reality.Box office numbers, even two decades later, still speak in booming tones ($760 million worldwide never hurts). However, the critics were less forgiving—27% on Rotten Tomatoes, which means Shooter, at least, wins on meritocracy if one trusts the masses. Oddly enough, for a film accused of being heavy on pulp and light on plausibility, it’s managed to cement itself as an enduring pop culture artifact: its symbolism, both sacred and absurd, continues to invite debates, docuseries, and the occasional protest outside a midnight screening.What unites these streaming revenants isn’t just nostalgia, though of course that’s part of the draw. There’s an underlying faith in the steady hands of a competent protagonist: the analyst untangling global chaos, the sniper weaving through betrayal, the professor solving puzzles that would shame escape room designers. These old-school narratives, for all their melodrama and convenient moral clarity, create a strange sense of comfort—if not quite order, then at least the possibility of resolution. Sometimes, one suspects, viewers just want the reassurance that, for a couple hours at least, secrets can be revealed and villains can be put in their place.No wonder the streaming industry has turned back-catalog action into a perennial harvest. These movies and series aren’t merely being recycled; they’re treated as rituals, familiar stories rewatched as a way of channeling anxieties into neatly-packaged catharsis. There’s something oddly communal about knowing that, somewhere, hundreds of thousands are also revisiting these tales—alone, together, in the strange glow of living room screens.In the end, the rising tide of Jack Ryan, Shooter, and The Da Vinci Code says as much about collective yearning as it does about Hollywood’s penchant for the tried-and-true. Whether driven by skepticism, nostalgia, or sheer boredom with algorithmic novelty, the audience keeps seeking stories of lone figures wrangling clarity from chaos, one dossier or treasure map at a time.That’s the secret sauce, really. Streaming, for all its innovation, thrives on circles: yesterday’s heroes are tomorrow’s top picks, and the digital campfire keeps burning, feeding off the old magic, one “Continue Watching?” at a time.