Five big-name Hollywood actors have played Jack Ryan in five films and in Amazon Prime Video’s TV series, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, but which version of the American hero is the best? Created by Tom Clancy, Jack Ryan is the protagonist of a series of highly-successful techno-thrillers. On the page, and in many of the films before the character was rebooted, Jack Ryan is a former Marine turned CIA analyst, who is also a history teacher, author, and professor at the United States Naval Academy. Later versions of Jack Ryan modernized his background and credentials to suit the times of their reboots.
The success of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan novels naturally resulted in major motion picture adaptations. In the first (and best) film, 1990’s The Hunt for Red October, Jack Ryan was played by Alec Baldwin, who shared the co-lead credit with Sean Connery. Harrison Ford took over the role and turned Jack Ryan into a genuine leading man in 1992’s Patriot Games and 1994’s Clear and Present Danger. Next came three reboots: Ben Affleck became a younger Jack Ryan in 2002’s The Sum of All Fears. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, starring Chris Pine, followed in 2014. Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan brought the CIA hero to TV in 2018 with John Krasinski embodying the role. With five very different versions of Jack Ryan that all still solidly identify as the CIA analyst, here’s who the best Jack Ryan actor is.
5. Ben Affleck
When The Sum of All Fears was released in 2002, Ben Affleck was better known for dating Jennifer Lopez and for starring in box office bombs like Gigli than his skills as a thespian. Affleck was a controversial choice to play a younger Jack Ryan in The Sum of All Fears, which rebooted the saga following the successes of Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford’s films. Affleck’s version of Jack Ryan takes on a Neo-Nazi terrorist, who set off a nuclear weapon in Baltimore, Maryland in order to start a war between Russia and the United States.
A decade before Ben Affleck directed Argo, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, the Boston native simply lacked the gravitas to play Jack Ryan. Morgan Freeman as CIA Director William Cabot and a cast including Liev Schreiber, Colm Feore, Ciarán Hinds, Phillip Baker Hall, and Bruce McGill surrounded Affleck with strong actors, but The Sum of All Fears played the relationship between Affleck’s Jack and Bridget Moynahan’s Cathy Mueller like a rom-com. Affleck likely doesn’t clock in as anyone’s favorite Jack Ryan. Ironically, Affleck today could probably do the Jack Ryan role more justice.
4. Chris Pine
Chris Pine was a leading man on the rise and Jack Ryan was intended to be a new franchise for him to compliment playing Captain Kirk in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek films. Directed by Kenneth Branagh and released in 2014, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit was a new, post-9/11 origin story for the CIA hero, and it showcased far more action that resembled the Jason Bourne movies. Pine’s Ryan is a CIA analyst posing as a Wall Street broker. Ryan foils a Russian plot to cause the United States economy to financially collapse while also preventing a terrorist attack on Wall Street by the villainous Viktor Cherevin (Branagh).
Pine is solid as an action hero in-over-his-head reinvention of Jack Ryan. While still properly intelligent and analytical, Pine goes all-in on Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit‘s emphasis on blistering action set pieces, as does his co-star, Keira Knightley as Dr. Cathy Mueller. Shadow Recruit was the first Jack Ryan film not based on a Tom Clancy novel, and audiences didn’t warm up to the reboot. But Pine himself was in fine form, although his version of Jack Ryan ended up as a one-and-done.
3. Alec Baldwin
Alec Baldwin was the first actor to portray Jack Ryan, and he shared the screen with Sean Connery as Captain Marko Ramius in The Hunt for Red October. Ryan, a historian who once met Ramius in Russia, deduces that the Soviet submarine captain intends to defect to the United States, and he spearheads a risky attempt to enable Ramius’ plan to succeed. Baldwin, at the top of his game as an emerging Hollywood leading man, brings Jack Ryan’s intelligence and courage to the screen full-bore.
The knock against Baldwin’s portrayal of Jack Ryan is that The Hunt for Red October is really more about Ramius. Sean Connery commands more of the screen than Alec does, even in the scenes they share together late in the film. Red October always feels more like Connery’s movie than Baldwin’s, and the disparity hurts Jack Ryan in his movie debut. Baldwin didn’t return to play Ryan in the sequels, as the studio opted to go for a bigger star, Harrison Ford.
2. John Krasinski
John Krasinski brought Jack Ryan to television in Amazon Prime Video’s successful adaptation, and he brings Ryan back to his roots as a CIA analyst and intellectual with a strong moral code. Krasinski’s Ryan is embroiled in a Middle Eastern terrorist plot in Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan season 1 while also romancing the character’s supposed future wife, Dr. Cathy Mueller (Abbie Cornish). In Jack Ryan season 2, he exposes corruption in the US Government involving a South American nation. Ryan is a fugitive on the run as he tries to prove a Russian nuclear weapons plot in the upcoming Jack Ryan season 3.
Krasinski’s Jack Ryan is modeled after the successful Harrison Ford movies of the 1990s. John’s version of character shows the same depth by blending intelligence, moral righteousness, and the ability to back his beliefs up with necessary action that Ford’s Ryan does. Krasinski modernizes Jack Ryan in a way that the Ben Affleck and Chris Pine reboots simply missed, by grounding the patriotic hero with everyman believability to match his fierce intelligence and willingness to go to any lengths to do what’s right.
1. Harrison Ford
Replacing Alec Baldwin as Jack Ryan, Harrison Ford redefined Tom Clancy’s CIA analyst and took him to big screen success in 1992’s Patriot Games and 1994’s Clear and Present Danger. Ford, one of the biggest movie stars in the world, made Jack Ryan his new franchise after he completed the Indiana Jones trilogy. Indeed, Ford is the only actor to play Jack Ryan twice in a movie, and he is still the ideal version many longtime Clancy fans think of when they visualize Jack Ryan.
Ford captures the core qualities of Tom Clancy’s character as a CIA analyst, historian, and educator at the US Naval Academy who is also a loving family man. Ford’s Jack Ryan pointedly practiced moral absolutism about right and wrong, and he is at his most resolute in Clear and Present Danger when he memorably scolds the President of the United States. Ford’s version of Ryan also hews closer to Clancy’s novel as he rises up the ranks to become Acting CIA Deputy Director. Simply put, Harrison Ford dauntless heroism embodied and set the standard for Jack Ryan that every other actor who plays Tom Clancy’s creation has to live up to.
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan season 3 premieres December 21, 2022, on Amazon Prime Video.
