The Hunt for Red October is a 1990 American submarine spy thriller film directed by John McTiernan, produced by Mace Neufeld, and starring Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Scott Glenn, James Earl Jones, and Sam Neill. The film is an adaptation of Tom Clancy's 1984 bestselling novel of the same name. It is the first installment of the film series featuring the protagonist Jack Ryan. The story is set during the late Cold War era and involves a rogue Soviet naval captain who wishes to defect to the United States with his officers and the Soviet Navy's newest and most advanced ballistic missile submarine, a fictional improvement on the Soviet Typhoon-class submarine. A CIA analyst correctly deduces his motive and must prove his theory before a violent confrontation between the Soviet Red Fleet and the United States Navy spirals out of control.