In Patriot Games , Harrison Ford plays former CIA agent Jack Ryan, taking over from Alec Baldwin , who had played author Tom Clancy 's brainy protagonist in Hunt for Red October . This time around, Ryan foils an attempted assassination, thereby incurring the wrath of maniacal Irish radical ( Sean Bean ). After several complex plot convolutions (including a nailbiting sequence involving a satellite reconnaissance photograph), the villains seem to be neutralized, and Ryan decides to celebrate the occasion with his wife ( Anne Archer ) and daughter ( Thora Birch ), whose own lives have been imperiled throughout the picture. At this point, all logic flies out the window with an unbelievable terrorist assault on Ryan's seacoast home, followed by an even sillier speedboat chase. As stupidly as Ryan behaves in failing to provide adequate protection for his family (is Archer condemned for life to play victimized wives?), the villains are even more foolhardy, with one terrorist virtually begging to be killed by facing down the well-armed Bean and shouting "You're insane!" Author Tom Clancy himself bemoaned the liberties taken with his novel in the final sequences; in addition, Ford is not as ideally suited for the role of Jack Ryan as Alec Baldwin had been. But who cared? Patriot Games made a fortune, and inspired a far better followup, A Clear and Present Danger (1994). — Hal Erickson