Patriot Games (dir. Phillip Noyce, 1992)
Jack Ryan is also codified as what we know him to be in Patriot Games; he is an older guy – maybe in his mid-to-late-40s – who has a family and who is very much not a man of action. Indeed, he feels like a gentle pencil pusher who just happens to work for the CIA, and get hired for occasional desk jobs. Midway through the film, Ryan will “turn on,” so to speak, and become a steely and resolute action hero, but he acts more out of vengeful hatred, and only works through legal means rather than working in the dull gun-toting-vigilante mode.
Ryan, his surgeon wife Cathy (Anne Archer) and his young daughter Sally (Thora Birch) are living in England on some sort of extended vacation. One morning, the Ryans are accidentally caught up in an attack by the Irish Republican Army. This was back when the IRA were something of a dangerous outsider group, so an IRA attack was a very real thing. If you don’t know about the history of the IRA, I recommend you do some research. Anyway, Ryan takes up a gun during the confusion and shoots one of the attackers dead.
The rest of the movie will be a cat-and-mouse game between Ryan and the brother of the dead IRA guy, a man named Sean (Sean Bean). Sean hounds Jack, attacks his family, and even car-crashes young Sally into a coma. Sean Bean usually plays threatening characters like this, and he is in fine form in Patriot Games, coming across as an understandable monster with a strict code of honor to adhere to.
There are a lot more plot complications, and there is even some examination as to how the IRA character operate, how well-equipped they are, what they’re going to bomb next, and who is really in charge, but at the end of the day Patriot Games is a revenge film. All the conflicts boil down to how badly Sean wants to kill Jack for killing his brother.
Like Red October, Patriot Games has an excellent supporting cast including James Earl Jones again, Samuel L. Jackson, and Richard Harris as an evil, evil dude. The tone of the film is far more steely and procedural than the last. More action takes place in living rooms and offices than submarines and military bases. Clancy is known for his knowledge of military minutiae, but Patriot Games is more about a conflict of personalities than politics. The titular game seems to be a euphemism for the extremes that patriots will go to in order to defend their countries. So when Jack re-enters the CIA and begins doggedly pursuing Sean, we get a sense that he may not be acting entirely righteously.
Patriot Games was a huge hit when it came out, and codified the Jack Ryan series. Many people feel this one is the best. I, however – ever the contrarian – feel the next one is even better.
