Welcome, kiddos, to CraveOnline‘s The Series Project. This week and next week we’ll be talking all about the five feature films based on the novels of Tom Clancy, all starring Jack Ryan.
Tom Clancy, author of bestselling geopolitical potboilers, passed away in October of 2013. Part of his vast pop cultural legacy, brought up several times since his death, seems to be that he is responsible for retooling well-worn Cold War spy tropes from sexy James Bond-influenced British gadflies to cold and steely American working men. In many ways, Clancy’s most famed creation, Jack Ryan, is an antidote to James Bond. James Bond is a single Jet Setter who drinks heavily, always dresses well, works alone, beds hundreds of women, and has access to numerous sci-fi widgets. Bond’s villains are always eccentric deranged billionaires with sights on world domination, and are rarely under orders from any particular government.
Jack Ryan, in direct contrast, is an ex-Marine working still who is a low-level employee at the White House. He has a family, and frets about what clothing to wear. He is not superhuman, and only takes up a gun in extreme situations. The villains in the Jack Ryan universe are also typically either terrorists, or high-ranking U.S. government officials who are secretly aiding the terrorists. James Bond would never go after actual terrorists, and we’d never learn that M was secretly helping them. There is something far more pressing and realistic about the Jack Ryan universe. Well, provided “realistic” means a stock universe of now-familiar movie villains like generic Russians, generic South American drug cartels, and their non-American kin.
As of today, there have been five Jack Ryan films and four actors have played him. The first three films are in the same continuity, and I’ll be reviewing those films this week. Next week, I’ll look at the two attempted reboots to the Jack Ryan franchise, including the most recent series prequel Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.
In the original model, though, Jack was already an established adult at the beginning, and not a young lithe hotshot with a gun, eager to murder people. He was mature. And he’s appealing and relatable in a way James Bond has never been. The first film to feature the character was the 1990 action hit…
The Hunt for Red October (dir. John McTiernan, 1990)
Given that Russians are at this point in film history (and in many instances still are) stock bad guys in American action films, The Hunt for Red October is surprisingly daring in its plot. The titular Red October is a Russian nuclear submarine – the biggest ever made – that is equipped with a special kind of engine that allows it to cruise waters without being detected by radar. The commander of this vessel is a stern leader named Capt. Ramius (Sean Connery) who, early in the film, kills a commanding officer makes it look like an accident, and replaces his order with a counterfeit. By all appearances, Ramius intends to go rogue and attack America.
Back in the states, the Americans are flipping out over the theft, and a special ex-Marine agent named Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) is called in to comment. The requisite espionage thriller scene of many stern-faced generals sitting around a giant table is intact. Ryan, through a quick analysis, begins to suspect that Ramius has no gone rogue, but is trying to defect.
From there, The Hunt for Red October is a hugely taut and wonderfully entertaining chase wherein Ramius has to outwit and outrun an American submarine that would attack it. Also, Jack has to make it to the American sub to convince her commander about Ramius’ possible defection. This film was made by the same guy who directed Die Hard, and I would argue that it’s just as thrilling and as exciting as that film, even if there is less levity.
Also, dig the cast! In addition to Connery and Baldwin, the entire cast is made up of recognizable character actors from that time. Sam Neill, Tim Curry, Jeffrey Jones, Scott Glenn, Peter Firth, Courtney B. Vance, Stellan Skarsgård, and Fred Dalton Thompson all appear. Hearing Connery and Curry talking to each other is one of the greater auditory delights available. The only one actor to appear in all three of the original Jack Ryan trilogy is James Earl Jones as Admiral Greer, eventually a defense secretary, and Jack Ryan’s best friend who operates “within the system” so to speak. Jones will be the connective tissue.
I hadn’t seen The Hunt for Red October until I watched it for the purposes of this project, and I feel like I discovered something. It’s not a terribly complex film, and the politics aren’t so off-the-wall that there are secret factions at work, but it’s still an incredibly well-made thriller containing wit, and a stirring attention to detail; Clancy probably knew the ins and outs of submarine operation, giving this film an authentic feeling. It also speeds by, even with a 134-minute running time. The only thing that bugged me was the awkward transition from Russian dialogue to English. At the film’s outset, the Russians speak Russian, but then switch to English through a classical quotation. I can handle it as a viewer, but that sort of thing is always ungainly.
The Jack Ryan series will get classier and more adult, but few films are as efficiently exciting as this. If I’m going to continue to compare the Jack Ryan films to James Bond films, I need a corollary. I’d say The Hunt for Red October is at least as good as For Your Eyes Only, the best of the Roger Moore Bond films.
How classy can this get? Let’s see…
