Springtime is chaotic and the Spring of 1990 was no exception, bringing tornadoes, Easter, graduations, Mother’s Day, and students coming home from college. Not long after I arrived home in May, my dad — a U.S. Navy recruiter — came home one night with complimentary tickets to see The Hunt for Red October.
Having read the book from Naval Institute Press a few years prior, I was excited to see how the movie stood up to the book. In my estimation, there are several reasons John McTiernan’s screen version is one of the truest translations of book-to-film ever.
Casting Alec Baldwin as CIA analyst John Patrick (Jack) Ryan was genius. Tom Clancy describes Ryan in the book as “physically unremarkable, an inch over six feet, and his average build suffered a little at the waist from a lack of exercise” (pg. 36). (Clancy reiterates this to me in a letter in support of an analysis I was writing for Patriot Games: “…he is…
Well, I stand by what I said in my article (thank you for linking to it). In fairness, I've not read any of the novels. But as far as the film is concerned, it's a solid piece of work that depends more on Connery to carry it. I agree that if that is…
