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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Crimson Tide (1995)

As if the confined spaces, the machismo of the crew and the constant threat of being sunk were not enough to pressure-cook the environment on board the nuclear submarine the USS Alabama, director Tony Scott adds a cigar smoker and a Jack Russell to the mix and then has the Second-in-Command (Denzel Washington) and the Captain (Gene Hackman) disagree on the best way to proceed through a nuclear missile crisis once their craft's communications systems go down.

★★★★☆

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