In
last week’s Face-Off, a pair of quirky and celebrated acting talents were tossed into the cage, and while Ryan Gosling definitely has his share of fans, most of you agreed that Joaquin Phoenix deserved the win.
This weekend, actor Chris Pine is the latest to take over the role of Tom Clancy’s famous CIA analyst in JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT. And he’s got some big shoes to fill, namely Alec Baldwin in THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER and Harrison Ford in PATRIOT GAMES and CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER (Sorry, Ben Affleck — only got room for two. Maybe you’ll face Pine in a future column).
So who’s the top Jack Ryan?
In THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, Jack Ryan is convinced that a Russian submarine commander named Ramius wants to defect to America, bringing a top-secret experimental nuclear stealth vessel with him
In PATRIOT GAMES, Jack Ryan interrupts a terrorist attack on a British diplomat by a splinter IRA group, then finds himself and his family the target of the vengeful terrorists
In CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER, Jack Ryan gets caught between a Colombian drug cartel and his own government’s devious machinations, and personally goes to Colombia to rescue US soldiers abandoned in a secret operation
An Alfa-class Russian sub, captained by Stellan Skarsgård
A cook
A group of terrorists led by Sean Bean (who, as you can probably guess, ends up dead)
Power-hungry cartel intelligence man Felix Cortez (Joaquim de Almeida), aka “the Latin Jack Ryan”
Jeffrey Jones, Scott Glenn, Courtney B. Vance, Sean Connery, Sam Neill, and James Earl Jones
James Fox, Samuel L. Jackson, Willem Dafoe, Raymond Cruz, and James Earl Jones
THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER director John McTiernan was no stranger to big-screen blockbuster material, having previously put Arnold Schwarzenegger against an extraterrestrial hunter in the sci-fi/action classic PREDATOR, and then launching a whole new subgenre of action movies with DIE HARD
Before bringing Ford’s Ryan to the screen twice, Phillip Noyce was best known for smaller movies like the acclaimed Nicole Kidman thriller DEAD CALM and the Rutger Hauer sightless samurai back-rack actioner BLIND FURY
Gates McFadden, best known as Dr. Beverly Crusher on “Star Trek: The Next Generation”
Anne Archer, best known for being menaced by Glenn Close in FATAL ATTRACTION
When Sean Connery was reconsidering the Ramius role because he felt there weren’t enough speeches, filmmaker John Milius (RED DAWN, CONAN THE BARBARIAN), who had worked with Connery on THE WIND AND THE LION, was brought on board to punch up the actor’s dialogue
John Milius wrote an early draft of CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER, and was later responsible for adding the cartel ambush on the SUV convoy (a sequence that has supposedly since been used in government agency training)
THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER – Almost $200 million worldwide
PATRIOT GAMES – $178 million worldwide
CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER – $207 million worldwide
Before THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, Baldwin was probably most recognized from WORKING GIRL, BEETLEJUICE and the primetime soap “Knot’s Landing”
Before slipping on Ryan’s CIA suit, Ford gave us two trilogies as a couple of the most iconic cinema heroes in history: Indiana Jones and Han Solo
Okay, to be honest this really isn’t much of a fair fight — if Baldwin had an additional opportunity to play the character, this would be a pretty tight contest as his loose version of Ryan was engaging.
While Ford’s movies obviously pulled in more bucks overall, he also brought franchise experience and his particular brand of gravitas to the role. I do think that THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER is the best of the three films, but Ford is the guy that most people probably associate with Jack Ryan, and for good reason. Good luck, Chris Pine!
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