Patriot Games (1992)

Tom Clancy's brick is given the Hollywood treatment with Harrison Ford stepping into the role previously played by Alec Baldwin in The Hunt For Red October, CIA agent and future PotUS Jack Ryan, a family man, patriot, and all-round impossibly good guy who here becomes the target of an IRA revenge plot that greatly endangers the lives of his beautifully expressive wife (Anne Archer) and daughter.

★★★★☆

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The Hunt For Red October (1990)

In this first of the Jack Ryan movies, released in 1990 with Alec Baldwin as Tom Clancy's hero, Jack Ryan is a mere "expendable" analyst but even so he is the only one among CIA heavies and the navy elite of two countries who can intuit what is really going on (nothing terribly thrilling) when a Russian nuclear submarine, the Red October, goes awol.

★★★☆☆

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Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)

The always charismatic Chris Pine steps into the lead role of this fifth Jason Bourne Jack Reacher Ethan Hunt Jack Ryan movie which is a glossy, youthful addition to the Tom Clancy film series but one that completely runs out of steam when Keira Knightley as Jack's fiance turns up unexpectedly in Paris mid- his first deadly assignment, is told her husband's secret business there, and then with a glib "while you're here" is enlisted by CIA zombie Kevin Costner to front up to a dinner assignment with a hideously violent Russian bad guy...and of course ends up a hapless pawn...yawn.

★★☆☆☆

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Clear And Present Danger (1994)

With Jason Bourne, Ethan Hunt and Napoleon Solo emulating DC and Marvel superheroes in search of box office success, it's a pleasure to revisit this, the third film adaptation of a Tom Clancy novel, with its hero, deeply likeable family man Jack Ryan, getting the audience rallying behind him without superhuman theatrics or bombastic action setpieces, but with cunning, diplomacy and an impossibly righteous moral code, here coming head-to-head with Colombian druglords.

★★★★☆

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