The Hunt for Red October

This film has one of the most frequently misspelt titles of all time – there is no ‘the’ before ‘red’. Despite knowing who was in it and what it was generally about, I’d never seen it fully, and thus was unaware it formed part of the Jack Ryan story, the character from Tom Clancy’s novels who also features in Clear and Present Danger and Patriot Games. It is the first in the series (although apparently contains many references to Patriot Games, suggesting it was written later). You don’t need to know this when watching the film, but it does help. Ryan’s character is far more interesting than your usual action hero. Here he discovers that the Russians have launched a new, silent submarine, capable of avoiding sonar and that it’s heading for America. What he soon learns, however, is that the officers are intending to defect. Connery does his best to restrain his strong Scottish accent, but it is not very convincing. There is a strange, very heavily signposted transition between the languages as the camera zooms in on a man speaking Russian and zooms out on him speaking English. I don’t think there is a better way to disturb your audience and disrupt the flow of a film. Connery’s character itself is somewhat unlikeable, and it is only with some extremely improbable plot-turns that Ryan (played by Alec Baldwin) gets to meet him face to face. It is a complex story, although there are some rather obvious devices to help it on its way: ‘I know how he’s going to get them off the submarine’ Ryan says at one point. He then doesn’t tell us, but keeps it a secret until the critical moment. It is ultimately a hollow film – teasing us with a deeper meaning, when there really is none. It is not especially tense, thrilling or dramatic, but good enough – which, most of the time, is all we want.