The Hunt for Red October
THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER (PG)
D: John McTiernan
Paramount (Mace Neufeld)
US 1990
135 mins
Action/Thriller
W: Larry Ferguson & Donald Stewart [based on the novel
by Tom Clancy]
DP: Jan de Bont
Ed: Dennis Virkler & John
Wright
Mus: Basil Poledouris
Sean Connery (Capt. Marko Ramius), Alec Baldwin (Jack
Ryan), Scott Glenn (Capt. Bart Mancuso), Sam Neill (Capt. Vastly Borodin), James Earl Jones (Adm. James Greer), Joss Ackland (Andrei Lysenko)
The first of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan novels to be adapted
for the big screen stars Sean Connery as a Soviet commander of a top secret nuclear submarine who plans to deflect to the West in the vessel, causing friction between of Cold War proportions
between two world powers. Alec Baldwin as CIA agent Jack Ryan attempts to cool things down.
It will help a great deal if you know everything about the
inner workings of a nuclear sub as the story is far more concerned with hardware and technology than human interest, and doesn't dumb down to pander to the lowest common denominator in the
audience, which sometimes is a good thing, but here it's just confusing. It also has a fair share of thrills and spills, but there's an awful lot of boring dialogue
in-between.
6/10
