Patriot Games

Starring: Samuel L. Jackson

Directed by: Phillip Noyce

RS: Not Rated Average User Rating: 3of 4 Stars

1992 Action

Patriot Games

634/35 7-9-23-92
Though it's hard to tell tom Clancy's bestselling, right-wing, CIA-worshiping techno-thrillers apart, his 1987 Patriot Games stands out for its opening sequence: History prof Jack Ryan, a former CIA analyst, saves the prince and princess of Wales from IRA splinter-group terrorists who try to off them in their Rolls outside Buckingham Palace. Clancy even puts his purple prose into the mouth of the queen. The man knows no shame.

Unfortunately, the movie -- adapted by W. Peter Iliff and Donald Stewart -- kills most of the fun by watering down Clancy. Instead of Di and Charles, the target is now the queen's wimpy cousin, Lord Holmes (James Fox). And there's nothing in the script to match the deliriously gonzo chapter in which Ryan lectures Charles about manhood and Di's scandalous press. "If anybody'd talked that way about my wife," says the macho Ryan, "Td have changed his voice for him."

The trip from page to screen has sure changed Ryan. "You look tired," says a female colleague. Good call. The last time moviegoers saw Ryan, in The Hunt for Red October, he was played by the thirtyish Alec Baldwin. Now he's the fiftyish Harrison Ford. Clancy wrote that the heavy-bearded Ryan had "undistinguished features" -- but that's Hollywood. Still, Ford's witty restraint grows on you; it's the script that torpedoes him.

Ryan had quit the CIA for the safer haven of the classroom and home with his doctor wife, Cathy (Anne Archer), and daughter, Sally (Thora Birch). Cathy is Clancy's idea of a modern woman -- smart, sexy and ready to bow to her husband when things get rough. No sooner do the Ryans return home to Maryland than the baddies, played like a fashion layout for terrorist chic by Patrick Bergin, Sean Bean and Polly Walker, try to kill them. When Sally is injured, Ryan explodes. "I want back in," he tells his CIA boss (a hammy James Earl Jones). Cathy appeals to his testosterone: "I don't care what you do, Jack. Just get them."

The rah-rah hits puke level when Ryan returns to CIA headquarters, in Langley. Virginia. Games was permitted rare limited access to film there. No wonder, To judge from this movie, the CIA is just a sentimental coffee klatch where agents plot against the nasties who hurt kids.

Though director Phillip Noyce (Dead Calm) stages action well, he doesn't override or parody the propaganda. At the fade-out, the Ryans are preparing for a new baby. There's no poverty of family values to vex Quayle, just a poverty of the madness that makes reading Clancy a kick. Patriot Games plays Clancy straight. To quote Murphy Brown, "Aw, jeez."