Actually, the film’s
story is already going when Ryan suddenly acts as an action hero by solely
ruining an attempt by a radical shooting of the IRA to kill a member of the Royal
Family in the streets of London. James Kendrick said in his review, “Ryan, who
has left the CIA, happens to be there for an academic speaking engagement,
putting him in the wrong (or right?) place at the right time to risk life and
limb to stop of the ski-mask-wearing terrorists from a very public
assassination.” He gets shot in the shoulder, but he kills several of the
terrorists, including the younger brother of Sean Miller (Sean Bean), a certain
explosive revolutionary who is focused on revenge, which puts Ryan’s family –
his pregnant wife Cathy (Anne Archer) and elementary-age daughter Sally (Thora
Birch) – in the middle of it.
Kendrick said, “Thus,
if The Hunt for Red October was a Cold War nail-biter with global-nuclear
implications, Patriot Games is a more stripped drown, personal revenge thriller,
with Ryan stepping into righteous vengeance mode after Sean puts his wife and
daughter in the hospital.” The by-the-book analyst gets ticked, at one scene
getting heated with IRA boss Paddy O’Neil, played by Richard Harris, in, you
guessed it, an Irish Bar. Kendrick said, “The screenplay by W. Peter Iliff and
Donald Stewart manages some balance in emphasizing Ryan’s analytical skills,
with plenty of scenes of him sitting at computer desks surrounded by papers,
pouring over files, and enhancing satellite photos, but the film is also
constantly eager to furrow his brow and put a gun in his hand.”
Kendrick continued, “There
are several action setpieces that work marvelously, including Sean’s attack on
Cathy and Sally while they’re driving down a packed freeway and the
cat-and-mouse sequence in the Ryans’ enormous house when the bad guys lay
siege. Director Phillip Noyce, who had been directing both film and television
in his native Australia since the early 1970s, but had only recently come to
international prominence with his thriller Dead Calm (1989), was an inspired
choice to replace John McTiernan, as he manages the action with verve and
efficiency while also giving the film a more nuanced emotional sensibility,
emphasizing Ryan as a father who above all wants to protect his family, not
save the world.” The film’s main stand-out action scene happens completely on
giant monitors through an infrared satellite video feed as a selected hit team
takes out a terrorist camp in North Africa. It’s a great suspenseful scene, the
conclusion of Ryan’s intellectual work to hunt down those who are trying to
kill him, but it also plays as a huge punch reminder of the calm with which
violence can be done and lives killed. Kendrick noted, “While many in the room
watch the monitors with the casual glee of people watching an action movie or a
football game, Ryan is clearly disturbed by what’s happening because, after
all, he instigated it.” Every “kill” happens from his work, and it hurts his
sensibility, increasing him over the usual action movie elements by focusing on
his sense of morality.
This may not be as good
as “The Hunt for Red October” or the next film in the series, “Clear and
Present Danger,” but it’s still a good movie that I think everyone should check
out. Like I said before, I don’t know how well these films follow the books
since I never read them, so I’m judging them as movies, not as adaptations. I
think this is still worth watching and you will absolutely love Ford in his
comfort zone, as an action hero. He really plays the role perfectly, and did it
better in the next film. If you want to know what I thought, go back to my “President’s
Day Movie Review” this year and you’ll find out.
Look out next week for
the next installment in “Jack Ryan Month.”
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