In Patriot Games, the second film adapted from Tom Clancy’s series of techno-thriller novels, Harrison Ford steps into the role of CIA analyst Jack Ryan, who was first played by Alec Baldwin in The Hunt for Red October (1990). However, unlike Baldwin’s role, which was largely secondary to the domineering screen presence of Sean Connery as a Soviet submarine captain with mysterious intent, Ford owns Patriot Games in true movie star fashion, which changes the tone of the film quite dramatically. On the one hand, clear effort was made to emphasize Ryan’s intellect—he’s an analyst and historian, after all, not a dedicated field agent—but at the same time the film can’t help but elevate him to the level of action hero, crowning him in the film’s climactic action sequence set on a pair of racing motorboats tearing through a torrential rainstorm.

The film’s plot, in fact, is set in motion when Ryan instinctually acts as an action hero by single-handedly foiling an attempt by a radical offshoot of the IRA to kill a member of the Royal Family in the streets of London. 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 is wounded, but he manages to kill several of the terrorists, including the younger brother of Sean Miller (Sean Bean), a particularly volatile revolutionary who sets his sights on revenge, which puts Ryan’s family—his pregnant wife Cathy (Anne Archer) and elementary-age daughter Sally (Thora Birch)—in the crosshairs.

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 bookish analyst gets gritty, at one point going toe to toe with IRA honcho Paddy O’Neil (Richard Harris) in, of all places, an Irish bar. 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.

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 true stand-out action sequence, unfolds entirely on giant monitors via an infrared satellite video feed as an elite hit squad takes out a terrorist camp in North Africa. It’s a brilliantly suspenseful sequence, the culmination of Ryan’s analytical work to track down those who are trying to kill him, but it also plays as a gut-punch reminder of the ease with which violence can be inflicted and lives ended. 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” is a result of his work, and it gnaws at his sensibility, elevating him above typical action movie fare by emphasizing his sense of morality.

Copyright © 2018 James Kendrick

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