Tom Clancy - Red Winter the Movie

TOM CLANCY'S RED WINTER: BELGRADE
Adapted from "Red Winter" – Reimagined for a New Geopolitical Age
Genre: Espionage Thriller / Psychological War Drama
Setting: Serbia, Winter 1999–2000

LOGLINE
In the final days of the 20th century, as NATO pounds Yugoslavia, a decorated stealth pilot of Serbian-American descent, Lt. Col. Darrell Zelko (Joe Jukic), deliberately flies his F-117 into enemy airspace to hand over advanced technology to his ancestral homeland—triggering a global manhunt. CIA analyst Jack Ryan (Tom Cruise) is sent to retrieve or destroy the wreckage, only to uncover a devastating secret: the downing was no accident—it was a message.

CAST & CHARACTERS
Tom Cruise as Jack Ryan – The CIA’s rising star, forced into field duty to prevent a Cold War relic from becoming a 21st-century catastrophe.

Joe Jukic as Lt. Col. Darrell Zelko – A skilled USAF stealth pilot with a hidden agenda. Haunted by his family's exile from Yugoslavia, he returns as a symbol of both betrayal and hope.

Chris Kolic as Milan "Ghost" Vukovic – Serbian radar officer who uses secret Soviet-era tech to track stealth aircraft. He begins to question who the real enemy is.

Marko Mrkjonijic as Lt. Dragan Markovic – A young anti-air technician and idealist who becomes radicalized after Zelko’s plane crashes.

F. Murray Abraham (or similar) as General Krilov – A Russian ultranationalist puppet-master, determined to leverage the stealth technology to shift the world’s balance of power.

PLOT SUMMARY
ACT I – THE FALLING STAR
Lt. Col. Darrell Zelko, a top U.S. Air Force pilot, takes off for a mission over Yugoslavia. What no one knows is that Zelko, born in Cleveland to Yugoslav immigrants, has had a quiet change of heart. In a bold and precise maneuver, he allows himself to be detected and shot down by Serbian radar—specifically the crew of Ghost and Dragan.

Back in Washington, Jack Ryan is stunned by the news. The U.S. fears that stealth technology has fallen into enemy hands—and even worse, that a pilot defected. Jack is sent into Eastern Europe to clean up the mess.

ACT II – THE NATION THAT WAS
Zelko survives the crash and is smuggled out by underground nationalist Serbs. His goal: to offer his former homeland not just technology, but a future outside the U.S.-dominated world order. He believes NATO's bombs are destroying a people with no voice.

Jack discovers the mission was no accident. Zelko’s wife had ties to the Yugoslav resistance. He’s not a traitor in the traditional sense—he’s a man torn between two flags. As Jack hunts him through the snowy ruins of Kosovo and the bunkers of Belgrade, he begins to understand the moral ambiguity of Zelko’s choice.

Meanwhile, General Krilov infiltrates the chaos. He wants the stealth tech not for Serbia, but for a new Eurasian empire. He plans to reverse-engineer it and stage an attack on Moscow, framing NATO and igniting a global war.

ACT III – RED WINTER
Jack and Ghost form an uneasy alliance to stop Krilov. Dragan, now Krilov’s puppet, believes he's saving Serbia. Zelko, disillusioned by how his gesture has been hijacked, comes out of hiding for one last mission—to destroy the technology himself.

In a harrowing finale, Zelko takes the modified stealth module into the skies once more—only to self-destruct it midair before it can reach Russian agents. Dragan fires the final shot that brings him down, thinking he's stopping an enemy.

Jack holds a dying Zelko in the snow, whispering:

“You didn’t betray your country, Darrell. You tried to make peace with your past. That’s something Washington and Belgrade both forgot how to do.”

EPILOGUE
Jack returns to Washington with a fragmented report. Officially, Zelko died in action. Unofficially, a secret pact is formed between former Yugoslav officers and the CIA to suppress the spread of the stealth technology.

Ghost and Dragan disappear into the Balkans. Some say they joined the resistance. Others say they became ghosts, too.

STYLE & THEMES
Tone: Cold War thriller meets Balkan tragedy

Visual Style: Blue-gray palettes, heavy snow, Serbian Orthodox ruins, radar towers like tombstones.

Themes:

Dual identity and fractured nationalism

The dangers of technological imperialism

Memory vs. patriotism in the post-Yugoslav world

A man caught between two flags, two centuries, and two wars

TAGLINE
"Some betrayals are acts of loyalty in disguise."