The Hunt For Red October

Director John McTiernan’s best known film is Die Hard (1988) an All-American yarn about a redoubtable, resourceful cop taking down a small army of foreign hostiles. The Hunt For Red October is essentially the same thing only with submarines.

Based on a Tom Clancy novel,  it is an anachronistic affair, a Cold War throwback in which the redoubtable, resourceful Americans show those damn lying, murderous Ruskis how it’s done, good ol’ US of A style.  As Alec Baldwin’s Jack Ryan puts it to defecting Russian sub captain Marko Ramius (Sean Connery) at the film’s conclusion as they sail down a moonlit river in Maine, “Welcome to the New World, sir”.

Red October is a state-of-the-art Russian sub which because of a special propulsion system is virtually undetectable to sonar. That is unless you’ve got a hotshot young radar operator (Courtney B. Vance) as has the USS Dallas, a sub which detects the Ruskis' presence and apparent trajectory towards the US.  Meanwhile another young  hotshot named Jack Ryan (Baldwin) is trying to convince the top Navy brass that Ramius is in fact trying to defect.  Not only do they want to blow Raimus and his sub to kingdom come (tho’ you’d think that as it is a nuclear sub that may not be the best idea) as do the Russians who want to stop him before he hands over the sub to the Yanks. Only Jack can save the day,

Most submarine movies relish the difficulties of shooting in confined spaces and working with the real logistical difficulties of submarine operating procedures.  McTiernan and his Die Hard cinematographer Jan de Bont however give themselves a huge mission control to work with while the subs themselves duck and weave like dodgem cars and virtually incomprehensible dialogue gives us the science of what is going on in the cat-and-mouse pursuit as panels of brightly-coloured instruments glow and flicker in the background.  

Cumbersome and served up with a Boy Scout eagerness to please, other than Alec Baldwin’s youthfulness, the one thing that impresses about the film is how it manages to get over the problem of Connery speaking Russian.

 

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