The Hunt for Red October (1990)

Starring: Alec Baldwin, Sean Connery, James Earl Jones, Tim Curry, Sam Neill, Scott Glenn, Jeffrey Jones, and Stellan Skarsgård
Grade: C+

This may be the only film I’ve seen in which a character dreams of living in states like Montana and Maine. It’s not uncommon, but you rarely hear something like this in a movie.

Summary

The opening caption displays how covert this mission actually is:

“In November of 1984, shortly before Gorbachev came to power, a typhoon-class Soviet sub surfaced just south of the Grand Banks. It then sank in deep water, apparently suffering a radiation problem. Unconfirmed reports indicated some of the crew were rescued. But according to repeated statements by both Soviet and American governments, nothing of what you are about to see ever happened”.

At the Polijarny Inlet north of a Soviet Sub Base near Murmansk, Commanding Officer of Soviet submarine the Red October, Captain Marko Ramius (Connery) surveys the waters along with Executive Officer and Captain 2nd rank Vasily Borodin (Neill). In London, England, CIA analyst Jack Ryan (Baldwin) says goodbye to his family and takes a plane in the middle of the night to Washington D.C. to meet with Deputy Director of the CIA and Vice Admiral James Greer (Jones). Following Greer asking how everyone is doing in Jack’s family, he asks the obvious question of what was so important that Jack flew all the way over to Washington in an overnight flight for. Jack shows him pictures obtained from British Intelligence of the Red October, the latest typhoon class. It’s 12 meters longer and 3 meters wider than the standard typhoon. He talks about Captain Ramius, someone who he’s done a bio on last year. Apparently, Ramius has taken out the new lead boat in each sub class for the last ten years. He’s got fairly good political connections and trained most of their attack boat skippers. The Russians call him “Vilnius Nastavnic”, the Vilnius schoolmaster. He’s not sure what’s up with the doors on the sub though and hopes Intelligence in Murmansk can help. Jack asks Greer if he can show these photographs to someone and asks if he knows former sub driver and current teacher at the Academy who does some consulting for the Navy labs in Skip Tyler (Jones). Greer does and gives Jack top secret clearance, calling for a car to pick up Jack in ten minutes. Right after he hangs up, he admits to Jack that a satellite saw the Red October in Polijarny that very morning.

Next, we jump 100 miles northwest of the Polijarny Inlet to see Los Angeles Class Attack Sub, the USS Dallas. Inside, the experienced seaman Jones (Courtney B. Vance) trains the novice seaman Beaumont (Ned Vaughn) on modern sonar, as they pick up the bellows from a whale. Jones messes with him for a bit, so Chief Cob interrupts to tell Beaumont about an amusing story revolving around Jones and his love of Paganini. Before he gets to the end of the story, they pick up some sort of disturbance on their radar. Immediately, Jones relays the message to Commander Bart Mancuso (Glenn) about distant and probably submerged contact. Jones suggests it could be a missile boat coming out of Polijarny. On the Red October, Borodin tells Ramius that Political Officer Ivan Putin (Peter Firth) is in his cabin waiting to talk to him, so he heads over. The two discuss Ramius strangely reading a book about Armageddon and how it was from his deceased wife, Ramius asking how many KGB agents were put on his boat, and Putin pleading ignorance to the situation. As Putin seems to antagonize him for no reason, he suggests they go into the safe to read their orders. Ramius agrees and uses his and Putin’s key to open the safe. Apparently, they are to proceed north to rendezvous with alpha sub Konovalov, Captain Tupolev’s (Skarsgård) boat. Tupolev was a former student of Ramius, but Ramius isn’t a fan of the guy, despite the rumor of Tupolev having a lot of respect for him. They are to run a series of drills with Tupolev’s boat where he will hunt the Red October, so they can test their ship. Having evaluated the “operational readiness of the caterpillar drive”, they are to return to Polijarny later in the month. The excited Putin asks for Ramius’s permission to post the orders for the crew to see.

Ramius agrees but when Putin turns to leave, Ramius breaks Putin’s neck on the table and kills him. He spills tea on the ground and stages it like an accident, burns the orders, and calls in Dr. Yevgeni Petrov (Curry) to tell him of this dreadful “accident”.

On Graving Dock #4 at the U.S. Naval Shipyards in Patuxent, Maryland, Jack meets with Skip Tyler, as he shows Jack a DSRV rescue submarine. Skip is having his workers rig it with a generic docking collar so it can mate with any country’s sub. They can get it anywhere in the world in 24 hours. Right after, they go into Skip’s office so he can take a look at the photographs. He notices the doors and Jack says they’re too big to be torpedo tubes. Following some further analyzation, Skip guesses it’s a caterpillar drive, a magneto-hydrodynamic propulsion. Essentially, it’s a jet engine for water. It has no moving parts though, so it’s very quiet. In fact, it’s doubtful their sonar could even detect it. If they did hear it, it would sound like “whales humping” or some other seismic anomaly. Basically, it would sound like anything but a submarine. Skip and his team tried to mess with this before on their subs, but they couldn’t figure it out. Skip almost doesn’t believe the photographs, but Jack insists the ship was put to sea that morning. Skip explains that with the abilities of this sub, it could park a couple of hundred warheads off Washington and New York and no one would know a thing until it’s all over. Back on the Red October, Petrov asks Ramius how he’s doing after Putin’s “accidental” death. Once he mentions that they have to report what happened to base because they can’t go on without a political officer, Ramius promises they will not cancel their operations because of accidents. Ramius calls over cook’s assistant Loginov (Tomas Arana) and has the two witness him remove Putin’s missile key to give to himself. A worried Petrov says they should report what happened to Red Fleet Command, but Borodin interrupts to tell him they can’t because they had orders for strict radio silence.

Petrov presses and says no one man should have both missile keys because Ramius could arm the missiles without resistance. Ramius fans him away and says all will be explained when he addresses the crew. He then says he will try to forget Petrov’s insubordinate comments when he presents his report, so Petrov thanks him.

Back on the USS Dallas, they continue to analyze the sound and their computer deems it a Soviet typhoon class submarine not previously recorded. They have six typhoons on the computer, so Mancuso tells Jones to call this one “Typhoon Seven” and to start a tape on it as they move closer to the noise to investigate. If they come in behind the sub’s propellers, they won’t hear the USS Dallas coming. Meanwhile on the Red October, Ramius addresses the crew. After being told that there aren’t any sonar or surface contacts near, Ramius explains they’re engaging for silent drive, they will leave their fleet behind, pass through American patrols, pass their sonar nets, and “lay off their largest city and listen to their rock ‘n’ roll” while they conduct missile drills. Then, they’ll sail to Havana, Cuba. The crew is elated and sing the national anthem. As this happens, the USS Dallas passes by and the Red October picks it up on their radar. However, the USS Dallas loses them because they can’t hear them, and they continue on with their course. On the USS Dallas, Jones tells Mancuso that the Russian sub was there just a second ago, but it somehow disappeared. For a moment though, Jones thought he heard singing.

At the Red Fleet Political Directorate at the Varposky Prospect in Moscow, Russia, Chairman of the Red Fleet and Northern Political Directorate Admiral Yuri Padorin receives a letter from Ramius and is shocked at what he sees.

Jack is called back to Washington and meets with Greer, who is aware of the doors being a nearly silent propulsion system. Mancuso radioed that they were following the sub until it somehow disappeared, so he made the connection. Greer gives Jack a report to read in the elevator and they go to Sub Level Four, White House Security. They go to a briefing for National Security Advisor Jeffrey Pelt (Richard Jordan). Most of the joint chiefs will be there, along with a few others. Greer tells Jack that he will be leading the briefing, and the presentation is already set up for him. Though Jack is nervous, Greer insists Jack knows this information better than anyone. He also says to tell them what he thinks. At the briefing, Jack explains the general situation at hand. In addition, he says that the Red October‘s name may be in reference to the October Revolution of 1917. It’s roughly the same size as a World War II aircraft carrier too. He brings up the caterpillar drive that enables the sub to run virtually silent and how this allowed their most respected captain in Ramius to elude the USS Dallas, which trailed the Red October since that morning. It’s also possible that this drive system, if operable, could render the Red October undetectable to America’s warning nets in the Atlantic. He is asked if it should be categorized as a “first-strike weapon” and Jack agrees it’s a possibility since it’s designed to approach by stealth and to shower its target with multiple independent warheads with little or no warning before impact. About the same time the USS Dallas lost contact, there were additional sailings from Polijarny, Leningrad on the Baltic, and from the Mediterranean.

There are now around 58 nuclear submarines headed at high speed to the Atlantic.

A satellite pass over Polijarny found heat blooms in the engineering plants at the Kirov, the Minsk, and more than twenty other cruisers and destroyers indicating they were preparing to sail. This constitutes the bulk of the Soviet surface fleet. The advisors ask Greer what he thinks, and he can’t say anything for sure just yet because they don’t necessarily have the data they need. Because of the absence of activity in the Pacific, it may just be an exercise. As one talks about the opposite possibility of it being a move against NATO, someone else brings up the letter Ramius sent to Admiral Padorin. Privately, Jack tells Greer that Padorin is the uncle of Ramius’s deceased wife. The others continue to discuss the letter. Though the contents are unknown, it is known however that Padorin scheduled a meeting with Premier Chernenko right after reading it. Within minutes of that meeting, the Soviet fleet sailed with orders to find Red October and sink it. Basically, everyone’s under the assumption that Ramius has lost his mind and is headed to America to start World War III. As everyone in the room begins to gameplan in a panic, Jack interrupts with the wild idea that Ramius might be trying to defect. Ramius trained most of their officer corps, which would put him in a position to select men willing to help him, and he’s not actually Russian. He was born in Lithuania. In addition, he has no children or anything he’s leaving behind and this very day is the first anniversary of his wife’s death. When his credentials are questioned past being an analyst, Jack points out how well known Ramius is and how he met him once at an Embassy dinner. Pelt is told that they have about four days before Ramius could possibly fire missiles at them, so he concludes the meeting and has everyone leave except for Jack.

Though he thought he was going to be in trouble for speaking his mind a little too much, Pelt gives Jack props for shutting down the general in their little mini-argument in front of everyone. Considering the possibility of Jack being right, Pelt asks what the next step would be in this case. Jack says they should do whatever they can to grab the boat. If the Soviets want it back, they can just get some people on board to inspect it and call it a “Coast Guard Safety Inspection” or something. First, they’ll have to contact the commanders in the Atlantic directly. If the Russians hear one bit of this through their communications, they’re screwed. Second, they need to figure out what they can do to help them. They need to devise a plan to intercede, ready to go at a moment’s notice. Third, someone has to make contact with Ramius and find out what his intentions really are. Immediately, Pelt makes it known he wants Jack to be the guy to go, despite his lack of field experience. Pelt counters by telling him no one else at the meeting could go because they don’t believe Jack, they’d never stake their reputation on a hunch, and Jack is basically expendable. Pelt will give him three days to prove his theory correct. After that, Pelt has to hunt down Ramius and destroy him.

Now, Jack Ryan is either going to help Ramius defect if his hunch is right, or he will just be a minor roadblock in Ramius’s pathway to starting World War III.

My Thoughts:

Though The Hunt for Red October has a lot of positives coming out of it and tends to be a huge favorite for fans of Tom Clancy’s Ryanverse, I can’t help but feel a bit cheated. After hearing critics sing its praises for years, I was expecting much more than what was presented onscreen. Calling it overrated may be harsh, but after watching the entire Jack Ryan franchise, I’d argue this film as being the worst coming out of it. The spectacle and exhilaration stemming from the confines of a good submarine action thriller shines brightly, and director John McTiernan (Die Hard, Predator, etc.) was a great choice in making things feel as rousing as it could possibly be in a film where 70% of it is focused on the politics of the situation, a staple of the Jack Ryan franchise. However, everyone outshines our protagonist because of Alec Baldwin’s miscasting, the action is muddied because of irrelevant story details messing up our understanding of what’s going on which only results in a constant sidetracking of the adventure and making it more start-and-stop than it needs to be, it takes a lot longer to get to the action than you expect, and the payoff to the nearly two hours of buildup doesn’t feel all that worth it.

We’ve talked about it time and time again, but Sean Connery was one of the very few movie stars who was big enough that he could get away with playing any character from any country in the exact same way, mostly because everyone was too afraid to tell the superstar he was wrong. He won an Oscar for playing an Irish-American cop in Chicago in The Untouchables, he played a Spaniard in Highlander, and even speaks Japanese in Rising Sun with the same distinct Scottish brogue, a point Craig Ferguson brought up hilariously in his stand-up A Wee Bit o’ Revolution. In The Hunt for Red October, he continues this trend by playing a Russian submarine captain who plans on defecting to the United States unbeknownst to anyone and seeing if he can avoid a nuclear war while doing it. In a role as important as this, you need a major star. On paper, Connery getting chosen was a perplexing choice, but he pulls it off because of his ability to understand the essence of the character. Obviously, he’s far from being Russian, but the character of Marko Ramius is one that commands the respect of everyone. He’s a larger-than-life figure who everyone knows in Russia and is one of their most successful commanders of recent memory. Ramius is a badass but above all else, he is a leader. He is daring enough to pull off a mission that could indirectly start a war but needs a crew that follows him, believes in his confidence, and trusts in his ultimate goal of bringing his fellow Russians to the promised land. These young sailors need to believe that Ramius can pull off the impossible to bring them to freedom, despite both America and Russia potentially trying to sink them. When you frame it like this, you can’t pick a no-name actor to play the character. A star who commands the screen needs to be chosen to make Ramius a force to be reckoned with.

Considering the star power and legitimacy Connery brings to any picture he’s involved in, it really takes the film to a whole other level on the Russian side of things, a factor that could be lost in the shuffle in a regular CIA-focused action vehicle. The glaring issue is that Alec Baldwin isn’t a big enough star to make the other side of things equally as important. After watching this entire franchise, I still think on the daily how much better Harrison Ford would’ve made The Hunt for Red October had he jumped into the role from the start. Sure, we wouldn’t have gotten Presumed Innocent if Ford accepted the role, but can you imagine how much better this film would be with Ford taking control and meeting Connery on a stage of this magnitude? Ford’s presence alone would make up for most of the issues I had with how this script plays out. On top of that, Ford would have at least gotten a trilogy as Jack Ryan, which is something he deserved. The fans deserved it too. Hell, original choice Kevin Costner would’ve been just as good, but I’ll give him a pass because Dances with Wolves was a better choice in general.

Alec Baldwin was just not the hero this movie needed. It’s very clear from his performance that the actor himself does not possess the qualities that make Jack Ryan who he is. He didn’t make us believe in the severity of the situation like Ben Affleck did in The Sum of All Fears nor Chris Pine in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, the latter in which was arguably a less serious situation in general because a majority of it was about financials. He didn’t strike the audience as someone who would do anything for justice and would spring into action when the situation called for it even if he considered himself “just an analyst” like Harrison Ford or John Krasinski either. All he did was make a couple of jokes at the expense of himself and his situation to remind the audience of his actual job title. However, the key to the character of Jack Ryan is that yes, he is an analyst. However, if someone isn’t going about things correctly or time is running out, Jack has to step in as a hero because it’s the only way to save the day. Baldwin never clicked in this aspect of the role. He fit as a general analyst, but he’s more one of those other guys at the conference meeting who starts arguing with everybody. He’s not the lead hero trying to save the world, nor does he come off as the next-level analyst that Jack Ryan is. Though every supporting actor knocks their role out of the park to help round the film out with loads of depth, Baldwin is supposed to take things home and lead this awesome cast with force. However, he takes way too much of a backseat. Sean Connery playing opposite him does not justify this backseat driver role Baldwin plays in a franchise that’s supposed to be about his character. You think Harrison Ford would’ve used that excuse?

Not a chance.

It’s clear that Baldwin wasn’t strong enough as the main protagonist. Considering this is a Jack Ryan picture and the start of a franchise, this fault is entirely on him. With full confidence, I can say Alec Baldwin’s take on Jack Ryan was the worst take of the character out of any of the movies, and this includes Ben Affleck, who basically played Ben Affleck more than he played Jack Ryan. It doesn’t help that I’m already not a big fan of Baldwin, but his take on Jack Ryan just felt too insincere with a tinge of smugness that comes from being a Baldwin. Even when things get serious and there is real potential of Marko Ramius starting World War III, it never feels remotely as important as it should because of Baldwin’s handling of the situation and how he reacts to conversations and such. This alone is what puts Affleck higher on my list of Jack Ryans just because he makes the world-ending scenario of The Sum of All Fears feel imminent and threatening. Baldwin’s Jack is too reserved and a little too light-hearted given the scenario. He doesn’t possess the fire, the hidden action hero underneath the skin of the character, or the intensity needed to rope us in. Think about it, do you really think Ford’s Jack, Affleck’s Jack, Pine’s Jack, or Krasinski’s Jack would accept the responses given to him by Rear Admiral Joshua Painter (Fred Thompson) when he’s on the USS Enterprise? Not for a single, solitary second! Every other version of Jack would either start a major argument in the heat of the moment, stress the importance of the situation much harder, or look worried to the point where Painter would have to make some sort of decision much quicker. Baldwin’s Jack doesn’t look nor act up the gravity of the Red October situation, so they react in kind, and he just accepts it. Why the hell would they listen?

Also, the contentious conversation he has with Painter and the other officer about the seriousness of the situation in Painter’s quarters feels like a waste of time. Sure, it helps the audience get more of an understanding as to what’s happening and the implications of everything, but the conversation shouldn’t be happening within the context of the movie because they’re running out of time and he’s following direct orders from Pelt. If anything, Painter and the other guy can suck his fucking dick as far as we’re concerned! They shouldn’t be able to brush him off because he’s there FOR A REASON. He only has three days to prove his theory! Why isn’t Jack flexing the order from Pelt and the fact that World War III could happen if they continue to fuck around and not help him? Even if Painter has all these questions about what to do next if they snatch the Red October, it’s a moot point because his opinion shouldn’t fucking matter in a world-ending crisis. Everything he brings up to Jack is pure conjecture and again, it’s just wasting valuable time. Jack should’ve shut things down with a “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it” type of answer, so they can get back to the matter at hand. It just doesn’t feel right for the nature of the Jack Ryan character to react like this and accept being talked down to in a situation he feels strongly about. Honestly, Season Three of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan alone does the climax/general plot for The Hunt for Red October better than what these guys put together.

On a side note, Jack talking aloud in the shower to himself to try and figure things out is way too corny and completely unrealistic. This is a trope that has to stop. Nobody does this. If he comes to the realization that they don’t have to figure out what the crew’s intentions are because Ramius did that for them and they just have to worry about Ramius himself, it could easily come up in a conversation with Painter, Greer, or literally anyone else. If you want to stick to realism, Jack saying this aloud in the shower to himself is plain stupid, especially in a film that tries to pay attention to every subtlety to make this world-ending scenario as authentic as possible.

In regard to the supporting cast that can’t be praised enough, Scott Glenn was a total badass as the skeptical American commander of the USS Dallas. In a film riddled with big-name stars, Glenn came to play as someone who could go believably head-to-head with Connery’s Ramius and look strong. Alec Baldwin should have taken notes on Scott Glenn because this is an example of someone refusing to take a backseat without undermining any of his fellow performers. When he stands in Jack Ryan’s way, as most characters do throughout this franchise despite technically being on the same side, it doesn’t come off as obnoxious or unlikable as it usually would. This is an issue most characters tend to have throughout this series when crossing paths with our hero, but Glenn’s Mancuso is one of the rare examples of someone who wins us over even though he’s an obstacle for our protagonist because of how serious he takes his job, his ability to read a situation and adapt, and still be prepared in the case of something going awry. He may be the “buckaroo” Ramius was expecting, but there had to be at least one in a movie like this. Plus, his battle of chicken with the Konovalov was intense and showed that they couldn’t have pulled things off without him. When he starts to listen to Jack and they try to communicate with the Red October through Morse Code, we also get to see other areas of his personality other than his leadership skills, and it adds enough dimension to his character to make him so much more than a faceless American commander, something he could have very easily have been if the role were underwritten.

When looking at the entire franchise as a whole, the only time I actually took the side of someone other than Jack Ryan is because of Mancuso. Right before they board the Red October, he hands Jack a gun just in case things go south. Though Jack is still adamant on Ramius’s intentions to defect, Mancuso asks sternly, “You willing to bet your life on that?”. It was such a great line to put everything into perspective to the point where you put yourself in the situation. We know Jack Ryan is an excellent analyst and we know he’s going to be correct in his analyzation of Ramius. Even so, what if he ends up being wrong? Would you want to be in a standoff without a gun? It’s a small but important moment where Jack has to come to the realization himself that maybe he needs to be ready in the case he is proven wrong. Again, it’s still a little out of character for him to accept this because it’s sort of like he’s admitting he’s not absolutely certain despite his research, but it worked in this case, and it added a lot to the drama surrounding the first meeting between the Americans and the Russians inside the Red October. This gave us the excellent shot of the intense stare-off between the two factions. The intensity felt in this moment is electric, and it’s only heightened by the flashing hazard lights from the false radiation warnings. The silence is loud, the tension could be cut with a knife, and it’s perfectly captured by John McTiernan.

Even in a limited role, the ultra-sweaty Stellan Skarsgård did a notable job as well, as the one trying to hunt down Ramius on orders from Russia. Though James Earl Jones’s role is smaller here compared to Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger, the wisdom and respect he brings to the highly valued character of James Greer really sets the tone in the franchise for the mentor role that has become vital to the Ryanverse. Despite Morgan Freeman’s William Cabot and Kevin Costner’s Thomas Harper equally solid roles as Jack’s direct superior, James Earl Jones possesses a quality in the role that supersedes them and is still arguably the best. The only one who has come close to it has been Wendell Pierce in Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, who wins you over much quicker than you would imagine, despite his initial problems with John Krasinski’s Jack. Though I do think it’s pretty funny that none of the stars leading the Red October are Russian, the reason I give this a pass is (other than what I already previously mentioned about Connery) is the ingenious idea from McTiernan. All of the actors speak Russian to a certain point, but once Ivan Putin says the world “Armageddon” to Ramius, there is this slight zoom in from the camera. This allows for all of the actors to switch to speaking English and in their normal accents. Waiting until this scene to do it tells the audience that they are speaking in Russian to each other, but this trick takes away subtitles that would surely take over the screen for 75% of the film otherwise, and it makes it easier on the actors to hone in on their performance rather than focusing on getting their Russian perfect.

This was a wondrous creative idea to get around the fact that these characters realistically would never have a need to speak English other than when they come across American officers. Every movie revolving around an international spy-related plot should copy this idea instead of having people in other countries speaking English regularly when you know they never would. I’m actually annoyed other films haven’t copied this. It’s too good of an idea not to use. If anything, this should have become a regular staple of the Jack Ryan franchise considering the fact that they go international in every movie.

In the case with a lot of Tom Clancy related films, there’s a lot of information in these screenplays to compliment the detailed world of his writings. Such is the case with The Hunt for Red October. More often than not, there will be a lot of details and backstory thrown at the audience in a hurry that is used to explain what is going on, but most of it will fall on deaf ears unless you’re on a re-watch. There is such an overload of information, it starts to turn into fluff at some point and doesn’t seem entirely necessary, as the runtime is bloated with expository dialogue to the point where it dares you to lose interest in the hard work put into the screenplay. A good example is when Jones tells Mancuso his findings when trying to track the Red October and how it says “magma displacement” on his computer, but it’s a thumping sound when sped up. A lot of these little asides with Jones becomes so confusing that even Mancuso seems bothered by certain details and just suggests he keep at it because he doesn’t really have a good enough response prepared. There’s this and the bordering-on-the-comical scenes between Pelt and the Russian ambassador, who refuses to admit the intentions of the Russian submarines chasing after a “random” sub and acts like he doesn’t know the details whatsoever, swearing that it’s just a massive rescue operation for unknown, high-party officials.

When you want to hear more, they take a step back for some reason too. How did Jack know the reactor failure was false? He admits it’s a guess, but he says the guess seemed “logical”. How? What pointed to this conclusion? I can accept the guess about the starboard, but this one specifically was a crucial hypothesis that deserved an explanation, but we get nothing.

When there should be time devoted to character development, we only get small instances of certain details but there is a severe lack of understanding to the overall motivations for certain people, which is especially true with Marko Ramius. For instance, why does he let all of his fellow seamen go in the guise of a reactor malfunction? They were still on board with him and would have succeeded in defecting. Why does he basically send them all off to get deported, and why are they thankful when they were following him blindly beforehand (“You will receive the Order of Lenin for this captain!”)? Even if the rest of the crew didn’t know about the Konovalov‘s attack and believe Ramius to be a hero, it changes nothing. They would have accomplished this with the crew just as well. Also, the biggest question surrounding Ramius is if he’s this crazy Russian with a death wish who plans on starting a nuclear war that he has no plans on finishing. However, it’s revealed early on that he plans on defecting. Even so, he teeters the line of madness more than someone with positive intentions should. He murders another officer, starts to sound insane when he talks about Hernán Cortés reaching the new world by burning his ships to motivate his men, and he calmly tells his other officers that they have about a “1/3” chance of survival as he eats his dinner. This doesn’t sound like a man willing to risk it all to make to America in search of freedom. If anything, he does sound like a psychotic and suicidal Russian captain willing to put everyone on board at risk in pursuit of his personal goals. However, I don’t think it’s supposed to be a part of the intrigue of the character. It still feels like a writing problem with the way things play out. By the end, it’s clear that Ramius is good guy, but he does so many crazy things that there has to be some truth to what the American officers think of his actions. It doesn’t come off as cut-and-dry, though it’s written that way.

Certain actions prevent us from being completely on his side even though we are supposed to be on his side by the time the credits roll. Bolodin was right. There was no reason to send the letter to Padorin, whether he’s Ramius’s father-in-law or not. Ramius knew the stir it was going to cause, and it only makes their mission that much harder when it didn’t need to be. No sane man would’ve done this, so it’s even more illogical for Ramius to do it, considering how intelligent and driven he’s supposed to be. If his plans began as soon as he got the blueprints for the ship like he says, then surely, he would realize how bad of a fucking idea it is to alert the government of his intentions knowing that it could cause a nuclear war and countless lives between two countries because of a misunderstanding he caused. Again, is he crazy? Honestly, I don’t think he deserves political asylum. This was reckless any way you look at it. Part of me wishes Ramius went into the deep end and became a full-fledged villain, but there’s a good chance he’s beating Alec Baldwin’s ass and still winning in the end.

Can someone tell me why Ramius has Jack man the controls of a submarine, despite zero experience, in the most heated moment of the film? All Ramius did was stand there and shout instructions to Jack, who had no idea what he was doing. It took more time for Ramius to explain things than it did for Jack to actually proceed with the actions. Why didn’t Ramius just sit down and do it himself since there was no room for error? Why take this big of a risk? Was it because Sean Connery had to stand up and look cool? There was also a missed opportunity regarding the veteran actors inside the Red October. Considering the tension between the officers and how close they were in coming to blows, especially after Ramius refused to let the caterpillar cool off and get repaired and choosing instead to run off of normal propulsion, there needed to be something closer in terms of drama between the Russians in the heat of the moment. It doesn’t need to be Crimson Tide-levels of drama (a movie that beats the hell out of this one in every category), but there should be some sort of action taken or at least attempted by the seamen who don’t agree with Ramius. I understand that they all held deep respect for their commander, but seeing Bolodin getting antsy with him later on was showing major potential for what could have been. They should’ve teased a bit more trouble between the two before the Americans came aboard in the third act. It would’ve added a lot to the overall excitement of these scenes in the Red October instead of everyone walking on eggshells around Ramius and just eyeing each other when they don’t agree with something. Basically, more depth was needed in the Russian scenes, especially when you see the amount of talent involved. If capitalized on, it could have added a lot to the overall drama of the picture.

The ending on the raft with Jack and Ramius looked outrageously fake, with an obvious CGI background behind them. It didn’t look as bad as the final plane crashing in Air Force Once, but it was enough for me to be distracted, lessoning the impact of the ending by about 15%. From an emotional standpoint, their final conversation would have meant a hell of a lot more if they were interacting with real scenery because it would have vindicated Ramius’s ultimate goal and comments. This last exchange is handled pretty poorly as well, with Ramius never actually saying what the issue was and only implying it terribly. I don’t need it to be spelled out, but concise dialogue was needed here because the details of what he said are still uncertain unless you look it up later. Lastly, the desired intention of the “New World” comment didn’t have the impact that they clearly wanted either. All of it was just mismanaged.

The Hunt for Red October had a lot going for it, but nostalgia has added to its legacy more than anything. When looking at the Jack Ryan franchise as a whole, this one doesn’t hold a candle to a majority of the series that follows it.

Fun Fact: Kevin Costner turned down the role of Jack Ryan to make Dances with Wolves. Harrison Ford was also approached but turned it down. Obviously, he would eventually take over the role in the sequel Patriot Games.