Taglines: Not for honor. Not for country. For his wife and child.
Patriot Games movie storyline. Former CIA analyst, Jack Ryan is in England with his family on vacation when he suddenly witnesses an explosion outside Buckingham Palace. It is revealed that some people are trying to abduct a member of the Royal Family but Jack intervenes, killing one of them and capturing the other, and stops the plan in its tracks. Afterwards, he learns that they’re Irish revolutionaries and the two men are brothers.
During his court hearing the one that’s still alive vows to get back at Jack but is sentenced and that seems to be the end of it. However, whilst the man is being transported, he is broken out. Jack learns of this but doesn’t think there’s anything to worry about. But, when he is at the Naval Academy someone tries to kill him. He learns that they are also going after his family and so he rushes to find them, safe but having also been the victims of a failed assassination. That’s when Jack decides to rejoin the CIA, and they try to find the man before he makes another attempt.
Patriot Games is a 1992 American spy thriller film directed by Phillip Noyce and based on Tom Clancy’s novel of the same name. It is a sequel to the 1990 film The Hunt for Red October, but with different actors in the leading roles, Harrison Ford starring as Jack Ryan and Anne Archer as his wife. James Earl Jones is the lone holdover, reprising his role as Admiral James Greer. The cast also includes Sean Bean, Patrick Bergin, Thora Birch, Samuel L. Jackson, James Fox, and Richard Harris.
Film Review for Patriot Games
You don’t expect a Tom Clancy movie to end with people tracking each other around a darkened house, followed by a gun battle involving two speedboats, one of them on fire, on a dark and stormy night. I haven’t read Clancy’s Patriot Games, and for all I know this movie is faithful to his book, but on the basis of The Hunt for Red October, which I have read, I expected this one to be a little more cerebral and without the Indiana Jones ending.
The movie opens well, with Jack Ryan, sometime CIA agent, in London with his family to attend a conference. Ryan is played by Harrison Ford with just the right note: Man of action with a cerebral side. His wife is played by Anne Archer, and they’re out with their little girl to see the sights when they suddenly walk into the middle of an murder-kidnapping by Irish terrorists. Ryan gets involved, is hailed as a hero, and wins a place on the enemy list of a fanatic terrorist named Sean Miller (Sean Bean).
There is a touch of Clancy in the behind-the-scenes stuff about the Irish nationalist movement (the official Sinn Fein and its spokesman, played by Richard Harris, want nothing to do with this splinter faction). And there are a couple of shallow, unconvincing but obligatory scenes where Ryan gets a dressing-down from his once and future CIA bosses. But then the movie settles into more traditional thriller patterns, until it all comes down to people creeping around in a dark basement.
Clancy is known for his expertise on high-tech, state-of-the-art weapons and surveillance systems, and for me the most interesting scenes in the movie involve survey satellites that are used to spy on the activities at terrorist training camps in the Sahara. We see the outlines of tents and vehicles against the sand, and then Ryan frowns, his brow furrowing, and asks the technician to enlarge one part of a frame. Then a little more. “Can you improve that resolution?” he asks. And then, whaddaya know, the fuzzy blobs on the screen resolve themselves into a low-cut neckline. Yep – it’s a girl! Just the proof they were looking for that this is the Irish terrorist training camp.
If you think that’s amazing, wait until you see the heat-sensitive photography used to provide live pictures of a night raid on the camp. We can actually see people getting killed, although unless I missed something, the movie doesn’t bother to explain why all of the terrorists are still alive in the following scenes.
“Patriot Games” includes the usual decisions that are made only by the characters in thrillers. For example, aware that vicious hit men have targeted his family, Ryan takes his wife and daughter to their isolated summer home, on a windy and rain-swept coast. I forgive movies for decisions like this, because I know that if Ryan did the obvious thing and set up bunks for his family inside a vault at CIA headquarters in Langley, the movie would be over. But such decisions don’t make the character seem much brighter.
“Patriot Games” at least has the virtue, in this season of soft porn masquerading as hard thrillers, of being about subjects more interesting than the character’s sex lives. The high-tech stuff is absorbing. Harrison Ford once again demonstrates what a solid, convincing actor he is, and there’s good supporting work from Archer, Thora Birch as the Ryans’ precocious daughter, and the irreplaceable James Fox as a British cabinet minister. But at the end, when a character is leaping into a burning speedboat in choppy seas, I wondered if this was exactly what Tom Clancy had in mind.
Patriot Games (1992)
Directed by: Phillip Noyce
Starring: Harrison Ford, Anne Archer, Patrick Bergin, Sean Bean, Thora Birch, James Fox, James Earl Jones, Richard Harris, Samuel L. Jackson, Polly Walker, Alex Norton
Screenplay by: W. Peter Iliff, Donald E. Stewart, Steven Zaillian
Production Design by: Joseph C. Nemec
Cinematography by: Donald McAlpine
Film Editing by: William Hoy, Neil Travis
Costume Design by: Norma Moriceau
Set Decoration by: John M. Dwyer
Art Direction by: Joseph P. Lucky
Music by: James Horner
MPAA Rating: R for strong sexuality, and for language and violence.
Distributed by: Paramount Pictures
Release Date: June 5, 1992
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