Harrison Ford takes over from Alec Baldwin as CIA analyst Jack Ryan in this follow-up to box-office hit The Hunt for Red October. Director Phillip Noyce has the now former agency man rescuing peer James Fox from an IRA attack in London and being hounded for his trouble by renegade terrorist Sean Bean. But, apart from one brilliant sequence showing a remote-controlled desert massacre, Noyce's thriller (based on the novel by Tom Clancy) never gets its act together to provide the direct appeal that all good action movies should have. The movie also rides roughshod over the delicate nature of the Troubles, despite an unconvincing apologia from Richard Harris's more politically astute terrorist.

When CIA Analyst Jack Ryan interferes with an IRA assassination, a renegade faction targets Jack and his family as revenge.