Movie Review – Patriot Games (1992)

Today we’re taking a look at Patriot Games, a movie based on the bestseller Tom Clancy novel of the same name.

Released in 1992, the movie Patriot Games basically follows the plot in Tom Clancy’s novel.  The story involves a naval historian named Jack Ryan, and how he stops an IRA terrorist attack while vacationing in London, England.  Although one of the terrorist soldiers is captured in the attack, he later escapes and tries to strike back and get his revenge against Jack Ryan’s family.

Directed by Phillip Noyce and with a soundtrack composed by James Horner, Patriot Games stars Harrison Ford in the lead role of Jack Ryan.  Supporting him are Sean Bean as terrorist Sean Miller, Anne Archer as Jack Ryan’s wife Cathy Ryan, Patrick Bergin as Irish terrorist Kevin O’Donnell, and Samuel L. Jackson as Navy Lt. Commander Robby Jackson.  Also in the film is James Earl Jones as CIA Admiral Greer.

Patriot Games begins in London, England.  John “Jack” Patrick Ryan (Harrison Ford) is a naval historian and giving a guest lecture at the Royal Naval College.  His wife Dr. Cathy Ryan (Anne Archer) and their daughter Sally (Thora Birch) are also in London and enjoying their vacation.

After delivering a speech at the Royal Naval College, Jack Ryan meets his wife and daughter by Buckingham Palace when he witnesses a sudden terrorist attack on the Royal Family‘s motorcade.  Jack jumps into action and attacks the terrorists, stopping one of them and shooting and killing another, but he’s shot in the process.  The remaining terrorists escape before authorities arrive on the scene.  Cathy tends to her husband’s gunshot wound until he’s transported to a local hospital.

It turns out that the terrorists are members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), an extreme offshoot of the IRA.  The captured Irish terrorist is Sean Miller (Sean Bean), and the one that Jack Ryan killed was Patrick Miller, Sean’s younger brother.  Their mission was to kidnap Lord William Holmes (James Fox), but that was interrupted by Ryan.

Jack Ryan is a hero in the eyes of the Royal Family, and they honor him by awarding him a knighthood.  In England he’s now referred to as Sir Jack Ryan, and his wife is Lady Cathy Ryan.  Jack is called to testify in the criminal trial against Sean Miller where he’s questioned on the stand by Sean’s attorney.  The trial is more of a formality as no matter what Sean is going to be sent to prison for the rest of his natural life.

After the trial, Jack Ryan and his family return to their home and lifestyle in Maryland.  Jack resumes his teaching position at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and his wife is an eye surgeon at a hospital in Baltimore.  Cathy has just learned that she is pregnant.

Over in England, Sean Miller is being transported to a more secure prison facility when the police motorcade is attacked by Sean’s colleagues in the PIRA, including group leader Kevin O’Donnell (Patrick Bergin).  The Irish terrorists then flee and make a clean getaway.

Just after Sean Miller escapes, Admiral James Greer (James Earl Jones) arrives at the Ryan’s home and asks Jack about re-joining the CIA, to which he refuses.  He then informs Jack that Sean Miller was broken out of police custody during a violent attack, and the group could be anywhere.  The CIA does not believe that Sean would travel all the way to the U.S. to attack Jack for a number of reasons, the main one being that it would make the IRA look bad and they would lose funding from people in the U.S.

That assumption though is wrong when it comes to an extremist like Sean Miller.  The Irish terrorist convinces his colleagues to travel to the U.S. and carry out an assassination against not just Jack Ryan but his wife as well.

At the U.S. Naval Academy, Jack Ryan is teaching a naval history class when he’s visited by his friend, naval aviator (and temporary instructor at the academy) Lieutenant Commander Robby Jackson (Samuel L. Jackson).  Robby presents Jack with a humorous award (a “bullseye” medal with the words “shoot me”) regarding his heroic action in London.  After the class, the two of them catch up on recent events.

When Jack Ryan leaves the academy that day, he notices a midshipmen student keeping an eye on him across the street.  He then notices the person following him and Jack jumps into action.  He ambushes and fights the assassin until the Irish assassin gains the upper hand.  Just as he’s about to shoot and kill Ryan, Marine Corps guards at the academy shoot and kill the assassin.

In Baltimore, Cathy Ryan picks up Sally from her school and drives her home when she’s attacked on the interstate by Sean Miller.  He shoots at her Porsche with a machine gun and misses her but hits her car.  Cathy panics and cuts across several lanes of traffic.  She accidentally crashes her car into a barrier, seriously injuring herself and Sally.  By the time that Jack arrives on scene Cathy and Sally are being airlifted to the nearest hospital.

At the hospital, Jack learns that Cathy only suffered some minor injuries, and her unborn child is fine.  Sally’s injuries are more serious.  It’s not until the following day that her doctor assures Jack that Sally will make a full recovery.  While waiting to hear news about his family, IRA front man Paddy O’Neil (Richard Harris) has a news conference outside of the hospital and claims that the IRA had nothing to do with the attack on Ryan’s family.

As soon as Jack learns that Sally will make a full recovery, he leaves the hospital and goes straight to Langley, Virginia and to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), where he demands a job as an analyst so he can help catch Sean Miller and the Irish terrorists.  Admiral Greer welcomes Jack back and he works with Marty Cantor (J. E. Freeman).

It’s now a job of sifting through the data and trying to find a connection or an angle to catch the terrorists.  The CIA knows that the PIRA terrorists are most likely operating from a military-style training camp in northern Africa, but there are too many to choose from.  To make matters worse, the terrorists know exactly when the reconnaissance satellites make their overhead passes, so they’re hiding in tents and structures during the satellite passes.

At one point Jack remembers seeing a woman with red hair (a.k.a. Annette — played by Polly Walker) at the attack in London and during his assassination attempt outside the naval academy as well.  He’s convinced that she is their best angle.  If they can find her, then they’ll find Sean Miller.

Jack then seeks out Paddy O’Neil’s assistance, but Paddy refuses to sell out any of his fellow Irishmen.  Jack then presents his information to Marty Cantor and convinces him to basically shift one of the satellites so they can get some better images of the terrorist camps.  It’s a big deal to do so but Marty is able to pass along the information and make it happen.

Later, Paddy O’Neil passes along information about one of the members of the PIRA.  He gives Jack information about Annette, an English woman who is one of Sean Miller’s colleagues.  Marty thinks that Paddy gave out useless information until Jack Ryan tells him that he never told Paddy anything about a woman with red hair.  This woman is tracked to one of the terrorist camps spotted by the satellite, and a British SAS team raids the camp one night.  People in Langley watch in real time as the special forces soldiers kill everybody in the camp.

It looks like a successful mission and closed case.

Meanwhile, Lord Holmes is planning a trip to America, and he arranges to have a dinner party with the Ryan family.  The dinner party is timed to coincide with Sally’s welcome home party after her recovery period in the hospital.

It’s a stormy night as Robby Jackson and his wife join the Ryan family along with Lord Holmes at the Ryan’s house in Maryland.  The house itself is secluded and located near the edge of a cliff that drops into the Atlantic Ocean.

The dinner party goes well until Lord Holmes’s traitorous assistant discretely kills one of the security guards and turns off the power inside the house, making it look like the storm caused the power outage.  Jack quickly realizes the problem when he looks outside and sees that his boat house still has power, something that should not happen if the house lost power.  He tries to contact the outside security team on their radio, but nobody replies.  They’ve been killed by Sean Miller and his hit team.

Jack and Robby play cat-and-mouse with the attackers and ultimately lead the family and Lord Holmes out of the house and down the cliff to the boats that Miller’s team used.  As everybody hides on the beach, Jack Ryan takes one of the two boats and races away.  Sean sees that and has Annette and Kevin O’Donnell join him in the second boat, and the three of them give chase thinking that Lord Holmes is escaping with Jack.

When the terrorists close the distance they see that it’s only Jack in the first boat.  He’s been acting as a decoy.  Both Kevin and Annette want to turn around as their primary target is Lord Holmes, but Sean refuses.  He’s grown hysterical in his quest for revenge.  Sean then shoots and kills both Kevin and Annette before aiming his machine gun at Jack’s boat.  He fires at the boat and starts a fire, but then his gun jams.  Sean closes the distance again and then jumps onto Jack’s boat to kill him personally.

There’s a fight on the boat between Jack Ryan and Sean Miller.  Jack ultimately gains the upper hand and kills Sean by knocking him backwards onto an anchor, impaling him on the metal object.  Jack then abandons the small boat before the flames reach the fuel tank and cause an explosion.  A helicopter from the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team spots Jack in the water and carries him to safety.

Patriot Games ends the next day when Cathy’s doctor calls with news about the health of her unborn baby.  The baby is fine.  She then finds out if it’s going to be a boy or a girl, and the film suddenly cuts when she’s about to reveal it to Jack and Sally.  Of course, we know from the book that she has a boy and the kid is going to be named after his father.

So is Patriot Games a good movie?

Yes.  From the story to the characters to the action scenes to the film’s soundtrack, Patriot Games is a great movie.

Like in many cases, you’ll get more out of the movie Patriot Games if you read the book first.  This is one of Tom Clancy’s earlier novels, so the director and producers really didn’t cut a whole lot of material from the story to make the movie.  There are some obvious differences between the book and the movie such as the assassination attempt on Ryan outside of the U.S. Naval Academy, and the whole end sequence when they flee from Ryan’s house.  The movie also basically added the character of Annette, but it worked well in the film.

My only problem with the movie is that they picked Harrison Ford to play the role of Jack Ryan.  Ford is a great actor and one of the legends of Hollywood, but he was too old to pull off this role.  In the book, Jack Ryan was still a young man and in his early thirties.  The events here take place before the events in The Hunt for Red October.  Personally, I think Patriot Games would have been better if they had Alec Baldwin replaying the role of Jack Ryan.

Patriot Games (1992) – movie trailer

But that’s a minor issue in an otherwise great movie and fantastic adaptation of the Tom Clancy book.  In the end, Patriot Games is a very enjoyable movie.

Sean Miller – “Bloody proud of yourself, aren’t you? You stuck your nose in where it didn’t belong. And now you’ve killed my baby brother.”

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Lt. Cmdr. Robby Jackson – “Attention to orders. I have a presentation to make. For service above and beyond the call of duty of a tourist, or even a Marine, we recognize Professor John Patrick Ryan, with the Order of the Purple Target.”
[he hangs a medal around Jack’s neck in the shape of a bulls-eye, with the words “SHOOT ME” on it]
Lt. Cmdr. Robby Jackson – “And hope that he will duck next time, lest he become part of history, rather than a teacher of it.”

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Paddy O’Neil – “The day that I sell out my countrymen, will be the day that I put a bullet through my own head.”

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Marty Cantor – “You tell O’Neil that you’re looking for a girl, he gives you the pictures of a girl. He obliges you to get you off his back. And you believe him?”
Jack Ryan – “I didn’t tell him I was looking for a girl, Marty.”