What’s the point of being an action hero if there’s no beautiful damsel in distress to rescue? Keira Knightley provides ample motivation for Chris Pine as CIA operative Jack Ryan to spring into action in our first look at the British actress filming the female lead role in Kenneth Branagh’s reboot of the popular spy action franchise.

Lainey Gossip has the first photos from what appears to be the reunion scene after a dramatic action sequence between Pine’s Ryan and Knightley’s Caroline Muller, who eventually becomes his wife. In this new incarnation of Tom Clancy’s famed literary figure, previously played by Harrison Ford, Alec Baldwin and Ben Affleck on the big screen, Pine plays Ryan who’s an ex-Marine and works in Moscow, where he “discovers a plot by his employer to finance a terrorist attack designed to collapse the U.S. economy, and must race against time to save America and his wife.”

Filming is now underway on location in Liverpool (it was in Manhattan previously, where we got our first glimpse of Pine as Ryan), with the still untitled reboot set for a December 25, 2013 release. See the full photos below and head to Lainey Gossip for more.