35 years ago, ‘The Hunt For Red October’ was a cinematic swan song for the Cold War

Alec Baldwin and Sean Connery starred in the Tom Clancy-derived submarine thriller about a surprising defection.

Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, over the years, has been played on screen by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, Chris Pine, and (most recently) John Krasinski. The Ryan character, a CIA analyst who, in Clancy’s novels, has risen from the CIA to the highest echelons of government, all the way up to the presidency. His cinematic adaptations have depicted him as different degrees of Smartest Guy in the Room and action star, depending on the project.

The very first cinematic Jack Ryan was Baldwin, who played the part in The Hunt For Red October, which arrived in theaters on March 2, 1990, 35 years ago this week. Baldwin, just 31, was ridiculously young-looking at the time; this was around the time he did the “I’m a Handsome Actor” bit on SNL.

Harrison Ford was reportedly the first choice to play Ryan, and he would take over the role for two subsequent movies in the early ‘90s, Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger- and remains pretty undisputably the best-ever Jack. (I still can’t ever hear someone mention lying to Congress without thinking of Ford-as-Ryan, in the latter movie, grumbling “I never lied to Congress!”)

In The Hunt For Red October, Baldwin’s Jack Ryan is in Smart Guy mode, as he’s dealing with a potential nuclear crisis, although he does point a gun in one scene.

Soviet nuclear submarine captain Marko Ramius (Sean Connery) is making unorthodox moves, leading the U.S. brass to worry that he’s planning an unauthorized attack. The film is set in 1984, during the brief Soviet premiership of Konstantin Chernenko.