‘Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit’ (2014)

The Villain: The Russians, for real this time.

Who is Jack Ryan? Pine’s instalment is a striking departure from the other films. It came more than a decade after the previous edition and is not based on a specific Clancy novel. It keeps key aspects of the character’s back story while updating the timeline, showing the helicopter crash that forced Ryan out of the Marines — the previous films only mention it — and suggesting he entered the Marines after seeing the September 11 attacks while studying at the London School of Economics.

The Russians, given barely any depth in the film, hatch a plot to prop up the US dollar in an effort to collapse it to crash the economy and then follow up with a terrorist attack.