THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Even though very much cut down from the
novel, THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER is a good action yarn with an
air of authenticity. While it is less of a film than fans of
the book had hoped for, it is a crowd-pleaser. Rating: +2.
Tom Clancy created a new market for the techno-thriller genre of story-telling with his 1984 novel THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER. This genre is intended to tell a crackling good story about the military and at the same time include a lot of "executive summary" explanations about what equipment is used, how strategy is determined, and anything else about defense that comes up in the course of the story. There was enough technical detail-- though its accuracy has since been questioned--that the book became the first fiction publication of the Naval Institute Press, whose usual fare was dry reference material on subject matter such as tides. The book quickly became that rarity today, a book that was not just a best-seller by its own admission, but also in the public's perception. When THE HUNT OF RED OCTOBER made it to paperback, you saw *a lot* of people reading the paperback. (Personal note: shortly after the paperback came out, I read it on a boat with less than a hundred passengers and I saw at least three other copies being read.) Now that best-seller has been filmed.
Part of the irony of the film coming out now is that while the source was greatly popular, it was all about the Cold War defense chess game that the NATO countries play with the Soviet Union. It is quite possible that the genre that the book fostered is itself going to be the victim of new, friendlier relations with the Soviet Union as, at least in the public perception, the Cold War seems to be coming to an end. I have yet to hear anyone say that the nuclear submarine fleet is being dismantled or that anyone has backed off of the edge-of-nuclear-war defense routine, so there may still be material for new techno-thrillers that work as something other than restricted period pieces.
The reason that THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER could still be filmed is that the plot did not include anything the public would have known about at the time so the film could still take the stance that this whole story is true and the proof is that both the Americans and the Soviets deny that it ever happened. However, some of the edge is taken off the story because the book gets its real tension from the ever-present possibility that the events told will lead to a nuclear strike on the United States. Read as a contemporary novel in 1984 or shortly after, that was a real possibility for what could take place in the story. That Sword-of-Damocles tension is missing from the film because--and I say this as only a minor spoiler--there do not appear to have been any nuclear strikes on major American cities at any time in the early 1980s.
"On November 13, 1984, approximately four months before Mikhail Gorbachev took power in the Soviet Union" (the story begins), the Soviets had a new super-submarine, the Red October, which featured a nearly silent underwater jet-propulsion system. This nifty little gimcrack has but one conceivable use. It is unstoppable as a first-strike device that undetected could nuzzle up close to the American coastline and then start firing nuclear missiles. And for the maiden voyage of the super-sub they had chosen to command their top submarine commander Marko Ramius (played by Sean Connery). Their joy at this great Cold War victory was short-lived, however. Ramius steals the Red October and heads it for parts unknown. Now both sides desperately want to get their hands on the Red October and neither side knows for sure what Ramius intends to do with the submarine.
It is, of course, impossible to take all of the action of a novel such as THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER and put it into a film of standard length. It is even more true with this novel than it would be for most novels, since the original was very heavy with military aircraft of many different sorts, very few of which made it to the film adaptation. They seem to have whittled down the novel with a very large knife. One of the most lamentable deletions was Ramius's actual motivation for doing what he is doing. In the book that made the character what he was and added a very tragic dimension to his character and at the same time said something worth saying about life in the Soviet Union. Perhaps in an efforts to make all its negative statements about the Soviets applicable *only* to the pre-Gorbachev years, the film blunts its social statement that still might be applicable. The bad guy of this film is a Soviet point of view that is seen as being strictly pre-Gorbachev. Another lamented deletion, if only because I would have liked to see Industrial Light and Magic's visual rendering, is that there is no nuclear meltdown on a Soviet submarine. This scene was a descriptive centerpiece for the novel and it should have been a visual centerpiece of the film.
That brings us to the visual effects that were in the film. They were sufficient to tell the story and occasionally very nice indeed but surprisingly shoddy in other places. One in particular that did not work is showing a torpedo coming at the viewer. The technique they used, harkening back to effects of the 1960s, is to superimpose a picture of the torpedo on the background and then just increase the size of the inset picture. You see this technique in films such as ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS, which had a budget a small fraction of that of THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER. In truth, it is done better here but it still robs the scene of some of the three- dimensional effect. The film also had a problem with some obvious matte lines. I suspect, however, the films needs to take some liberties with visual effects if for no other reason than that seeing actual submarine fights at the proper depth it might be difficult for the viewer to see very much or to tell what is going on. The underwater visuals probably told the story more clearly than was realistic for them to tell it.
Also adding to the effect is a score by a master film composer whose work is all too rarely heard, Basil Polidouris. He has scored at least two films before on the them of American-Soviet relations, RED DAWN and AMERIKA, though his masterpiece was his rich and varied score for CONAN THE BARBARIAN, by far the best thing about that film. In THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, his score seems to have been influenced by the music of the Russian Army Chorus and Band. And while it may not have been a very original or creative choice, it certainly was a proper one and the choral pieces do make for magnificent sections of music.
Finally, some mention should be made of the casting. Sean Connery, of course, was not the first choice for Ramius. That choice was German actor Klaus Maria Brandauer whom Sean Connery defeated in NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN and whom he beat one more time in the casting of THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER. I suspect Brandauer could have done Ramius a little better since he does not have a Scottish accent. And perhaps to the ears of the public a German accent sounds more Russian than a Scottish one does. However, if the public thinks that Edinburgh-raised Connery does not sound sufficiently Russian, the producers could counter that he really is not supposed to be. Ramius is not Russian--he is Lithuanian! Actually, accents brings up one of the film's major implausibilities. It is hard to believe that any Biblical passage, no matter how powerful, could make an entire Soviet submarine crew speak English and not even realize they were doing it. (That's an inside joke for people who have seen the film.)
Second lead went to Alec Baldwin as CIA analyst Jack Ryan, a continuing character in Clancy's novels. Baldwin, who played the somewhat simpy ghost-husband in BEETLEJUICE, is actually a very good Ryan, a family man with a fear of flying who also has just a bit of Sherlock Holmes in him. He has a very winning combination of high competence and vulnerability. Like Ramius, he is also a renegade with very strong opinions. One of the nice touches of the script (and counter to the cliche) is that while Ramius has actually read Ryan's books on military history, he does not think very much of them.
THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER has a heavy sprinkling of familiar faces in other roles. Scott Glenn is crisp as submarine captain Marcuso. Sam Neill is a little too sugary as Ramius's second-in-command. Then there is James Earl Jones, Joss Ackland, Richard Jordan (in a role as a wily politician that is somewhat of a departure for him), Peter Firth, Tim Curry (as the Red October's goggle-eyed surgeon), and Jeffrey Jones.
While this seems more a Readers' Digest condensation of the Clancy novel, much scaled down for the big screen, it certainly is a good adventure yarn, particularly welcome because it was not saved for a summertime release. I rate it a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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