PATRIOT GAMES
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney
PATRIOT GAMES is a film directed by Philip Noyce and written by W. Peter Illif and Donald Stewart, from the novel by Tom Clancy. It stars Harrison Ford, Anne Archer, Patrick Bergin, with Edward Fox, Thora Birch, Sean Bean, James Earl Jones, Samuel Jackson, and Richard Harris. Rated R, due to violence and profanity.
PATRIOT GAMES is cinematic sequel to THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER. The continuing character of Jack Ryan is taken up this time by Harrison Ford, who is now on the verge of owning what may well turn out to be the three most popular trilogic heroes in movie history (such as it is)--Han Solo, Indiana Jones, and now Jack Ryan. Certainly, Ford banishes all memory of Alec Baldwin's assay of the character in the earlier Ryan movie. Harrison's Ryan is supremely sensible, tightly controlling both his anger with the terrorists who are threatening his family and with the cold techno-killer bureaucracy of the CIA, to which he returns. There is a defining scene well into the latter part of the movie of a remote-control kill that shows Ryan ambiguously reacting to the impersonal horror and video-gamesmanship of high-tech mayhem. It is with this scene that PATRIOT GAMES marks itself off from the run-of-the-mill political thriller.
While Harrison Ford seems to have been a inspired choice to take over the Ryan role, much of the credit for the film's excellences must go to Philip Noyce, the Australian director who devastated so many of us with his DEAD CALM (1989). Last year's BLIND FURY may have represented an unfortunate detour, but Noyce is back on track with PATRIOT GAMES. I particularly appreciated the little shticks he did with Thora Birch, the Ryans' charmingly precocious daughter. Her attempts to get the attention of the guard at Buckingham Palace, her connoisseur's expression of appreciation at his professionalism, her knowing little smile in the heat of the last scenes, added charm and humanity to the inherent coldness of a techno-thriller, as well as giving the little girl a real personality and making more than a doll out of her character. It was especially the skill with which Noyce exploits the mounting tension that is his speciality, his gift, as well as his attention to both strategic detail (the film crew was allowed limited access to the CIA facilities) and to the human dimensions.
(By the way, who's seen Noyce's earlier Australian films, NEWSFRONT, HEATWAVE, or ECHOES OF PARADISE? I haven't, and they all sound most intriguing.)
Ford gets some humorous back up from his CIA colleagues Samuel Jackson and James Earl Jones (the only RED OCTOBER alumnus to return); Edward Fox is fine as the endangered royal with the common touch, probably better than the House of Windsor deserves. Anne Archer largely reprieves her role as the worried mother from FATAL ATTRACTION, but still elicits our sympathy and support; if only the Ryans weren't quite such a perfect family, but still Archer knows what she's about and does it sensibly and admirably. Her scene involving a car phone busy at the worst possible time is a fine moment in the history of suspense.
The greatest weakness amongst the characterizations and in the plot is found with the IRA characters. We have Richard Harris in a small but important role as the Sinn Fein bagman in the U.S. who is trying to dissociate the IRA from the current baddies without betraying his patriotic loyalties to all Irish. This is pretty complex stuff and the film seems to assume that we will understand what's what here without having to explore any of it on screen. Then there are the bad guys who break away from the IRA and in the process make that group look like so many incompetent blunderers. Patrick Bergin is a leader, a warrior, a man with a vision, but we never get an inkling of what's really motivating him or how he does those murderous miracles of his. There is certainly no attempt to understand the motivations or mind set of a terrorist. Sean Bean as the loose cannon is simply a monster.
Composer James Horner needs a good talking to about his score which seems to have been copied from ALIENS.
PATRIOT GAMES opens no new territory in either story telling or movie making, but it does leave us hanging at the end most pleasantly and domestically on the end of a sequel hook. I'm sure we will want to come back for more of this kind of intelligence, suspense, humanity, humor, and economy.
I can recommend PATRIOT GAMES to you even at full ticket price.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney .
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