Movie Review: 'The Hunt for Red October'

Pros: Fine performances by Baldwin and Connery.

Cons: Movie-wise, no. See review for quibbles.

One of the things I've learned about screenplay writing is that adapting a book, particularly a popular novel, is not always an easy task. Syd Field's book, Screenplay, devotes an entire chapter to the subject of adaptation. Field points out, and I am paraphrasing here, that novels and screenplays are two different forms of writing. Each has its own rules and each one differs vastly in purpose.

 A novel, for instance, is meant to be read by a large audience and each reader can read it at his or her own pace.

 Screenplays, on the other hand, are the blueprints for the making of movies. Both tell a story, and if a novel is being adapted into a screenplay, often the same story.

I offer this caveat because many Tom Clancy fans often feel that movie versions of their favorite novels often disappoint them. Scenes and characters - even entire subplots and/or adversaries' motivations - often vanish or are altered beyond recognition.

This is true even in John McTiernan's The Hunt for Red October, the first of five films adapted from or inspired by Clancy's Jack Ryan novels. (2014’s Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit borrows elements from Ryan’s backstory from the books but is an original “reboot” story for the screen.)

Starring Sean Connery as Soviet Captain First Rank Marko Ramius, Alec Baldwin as CIA analyst John Patrick (Jack) Ryan, and James Earl Jones as CIA Deputy Director (Intelligence) Admiral James Greer, McTiernan's film catches the spirit, rather than the letter, of Clancy's first best-selling novel.

It is 1984, a few months before Mikhail Gorbachev became the last leader of the Soviet Union. In one of the fjords near Polyarny Naval Base, the Red October, a modified Typhoon-class missile sub -- "boomer" in U.S. Navy slang -- sets out on a routine training exercise. Perched on the small bridge atop the sub's sail are two top-notch Soviet naval officers who, unbeknownst to the political officers who placed their trust in them, are about to commit an act of treason against the State. They are Capt. Marko Ramius and his first officer, Yuri Borodin (Sam Neill), and in league with several other officers, they plan to sail Red October west....and defect to the United States.

Meanwhile, Jack Ryan, a CIA analyst currently assigned to the London station, is shuttled over to CIA headquarters to brief DDI Greer about unidentified modifications to a Typhoon-class boomer -- two sets of "doors" fore and aft that show up in grainy pictures obtained by British Intelligence. Since the British don't know what those doors are, and neither does he, Jack suggests to Greer that the best guy to examine the photos and give the Agency an estimate of the doors' function is Skip Tyler (Jeffrey Jones), a former sub skipper and now a consultant to the Navy with a security clearance of Top Secret or higher. Greer agrees, knowing the information is badly needed.

Sure enough, Tyler pores over the photos, and after eliminating several other possibilities, concludes the doors are part of a hydrodynamic or "caterpillar" drive, a "jet engine for the water." Water flows in the front, goes through the drive, and is ejected out the back; with few moving parts, it's a nearly silent propulsion system which makes Red October virtually undetectable by most NATO/U.S. sonar systems. In essence, its stealthy features make the new sub a first strike weapon. Ryan is stunned by the revelation, but thinks the assignment is just a research project.

Skip Tyler: [Looking at photos of Red October which show the doors in the front and back of the sub] I'll be... This might be a caterpillar. 

Jack Ryan: A what? 

Skip Tyler: A caterpillar drive. Magneto hydrodynamic propulsion. You follow? 

Jack Ryan: No. 

Skip Tyler: It's like... a jet engine for the water. Goes in the front, gets squirted out the back. Only it has no moving parts so it's very, very quiet. 

Jack Ryan: Like how quiet. 

Skip Tyler: Doubt our sonar would even pick it up. If it did, it would sound like... whales humping or some kind of seismic anomaly. Anything but a submarine. We messed with this a few years ago. Couldn't make it work. This... this isn't a mockup. 

Jack Ryan: She was put to sea this morning. 

Skip Tyler: When I was twelve, I helped my daddy build a bomb shelter in our basement because some fool parked a dozen warheads 90 miles off the coast of Florida. Well, this thing could park a couple of hundred warheads off Washington and New York and no one would know anything about it till it was all over.

That is, until Adm. Greer summons him to the White House to help brief Dr. Jeff Pelt (the late Richard Jordan), the President's National Security Adviser. The entire Soviet combatant arm of the fleet is heading out to sea, with orders to find the Red October...and sink her. Now the Americans must figure out why. Is her captain planning an attack on the United States? Is this merely an exercise? Or is this the prelude to World War III. Suddenly it becomes Ryan's mission to figure out what Ramius -- whose CIA biography had been one of Ryan's previous assignments -- is really intending to do.

The film condenses much of the novel's action considerably, but director McTiernan and producer Mace Neufeld also capture many of Clancy's key themes and supporting characters.

 For Ryan is part of an ad hoc team that also includes Commander Bart Mancuso (Scott Glenn) and the crew of USS Dallas, the Los Angeles-class sub that tracks Red October throughout the film. A key member of the crew is Seaman Ronald Jones (Law & Order: Criminal Intent's Courtney A. Vance), the ace sonar operator who first picks up the boomer on her way out of Polyarny, loses her temporarily, then picks up her faint trace with his attuned hearing and expertise with his expensive sound detection gear.

 Capt. Bart Mancuso: [after hearing Jones's findings] Have I got this straight, Jonesy? A $40 million computer tells you you're chasing an earthquake, but you don't believe, and you come up with this on your own? 

Seaman Jones: Yes, sir. 

Capt. Bart Mancuso: Including all the navigation maps? 

Seaman Jones: Sir, I-I've got all the... 

Capt. Bart Mancuso: Relax, Jonesy. You sold me.

The movie features exciting action and nail-biting tension throughout, even though the underwater scenes look a bit murky on TV screens. The pacing is as good as can be expected from the director of Predator and two Die Hard films, and Basil Pouledoris' Russian-flavored score is fittingly exciting.

But pacing, effects, and musical scores are worthless if the actors don't perform well. Happily, The Hunt for Red October is enhanced by great performances by Baldwin and Connery, whose chemistry in their scenes together evokes the Ryan-Ramius relationship in Clancy's book, making this the best of the five films set in the "Ryanverse."

Had screenwriters Larry Ferguson and Donald Stewart even attempted to be as slavishly faithful to Clancy's novel, it is unlikely that producer Neufeld would have been able to get Paramount Pictures to undertake such a massive production.

To depict the hunt for a defecting Typhoon-class submarine would have required expensive miniature effects sequences, for what makes Clancy's novel so exciting is the ensuing face-off between most of the Soviet Navy and a large fraction of the U.S. Navy. Could it have been done? Perhaps...but it would have cost almost as much as Titanic did (over $200 million).

 Not included in the screenplay were passing references to Patriot Games, which in the chronology of the books is a prequel to The Hunt for Red October, as well as a secondary storyline (what TV writers would call a B story) involving an American spy working for the Soviets. Clancy readers know that this storyline will be developed in two other novels. However, in order to make this movie move smoothly, many scenes and characters were simply not included.

In spite of these compromises - or perhaps because of them - McTiernan manages to tell a gripping action adventure piece that is also cerebral. Connery's Ramius (despite his distinctive Scots burr) is strikingly similar to the one in the novel. Baldwin's Jack Ryan also comes close to his literary alter-ego, and one wonders how the franchise would have fared had he not been replaced by Harrison Ford for two films and Ben Affleck in one, and Chris Pine in yet another movie. Even the sea chase - now pared down to one Alfa-class submarine and a Bear Foxtrot anti-sub warfare patrol plane for the Soviets, and one Los Angeles-class nuclear attack sub and one Perry-class frigate for the U.S. Navy's onscreen force - makes this movie worth watching.