Jack Ryan, Reaganite Hero
Tom Clancy’s character—a former Marine, Wall Street millionaire, reluctant CIA agent, and loyal family man—has long been a symbol of a bygone era.
The hallmark of every Jack Ryan dramatization is a scene in which the hero complains that he’s out of his depth. “I’m not field personnel, I’m only an analyst,” Alec Baldwin’s Ryan tells his boss in the first movie outing for the character, the 1990 adaptation of Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red“I’m an analyst…I’m not trained for that,” Ben Affleck’s Ryan notes in 2002’s . In the new Amazon series , the ritual protestation comes midway through the first episode, when Ryan (John Krasinski) is told he’s going to Yemen to interrogate a suspect with possible links to terrorism. “I’m an analyst,” Ryan says. “I don’t interrogate people. I write reports.”
