Juego de patriotas

Patriot Games is a more than serviceable thriller, perhaps a bit out of date when viewing it now, but still a very effective good against evil piece. The source material is so dense and intricate it was always going to be hard to condense that into a 2 hour movie but I feel the makers manage to keep it fleshy whilst making the respective characters interesting and watchable. The acting on show is more than adequate, Harrison Ford is great in the role of Jack Ryan, he manages to portray him as a sensitive family man who can step up to the plate when things get ugly, and Anne Archer is solid enough as the wife and mother caught up in the web of nastiness unfolding.

The baddies are led by the brooding Sean Bean who is a little under written, whilst Richard Harris is sadly underused, but the action set pieces make their mark and thankfully we get a riveting final reel that cements the steady ride we have under taken. It is formulaic to a degree, but that is OK if the combined efforts of all involved are spot on, and here they are, 7/10.

An older retired Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) is in England for a symposium of some nature. While there he witnesses an attempt on the life of a royal by some heavily armed terrorists. Jack goes into superspy mode, even at his advanced age, and takes out two terrorists while holding another at gunpoint.

This action of his makes him a hero in England but he becomes enemy number one to Sean Miller (Sean Bean), an extremist IRA member whose brother was killed by Jack Ryan. Anyone familiar with Sean Bean's cinematic history can figure out what happened to him.

I wasn't feeling this movie for two reasons and two reasons only:

1.) The sheer improbability of an aged, unarmed Jack Ryan getting involved in a terrorist shootout on foreign soil. Especially when his reasoning was "it just pissed me off." It pissed you off? You're a trained C.I.A. agent and former Marine but you can still be motivated to put your life in danger because it pissed you off.

2.) The sheer improbability of Sean Miller and friends being able to have the dearth of resources to commit a terrorist act in England and then safely get to America where they'd have the same resources to track down Jack Ryan and family. Is there no place they can't go?

Outside of these two crater sized pock marks the movie was good. It was a mix of investigative acumen, military technology, and combat skill. The movie was suspenseful as each side tried to stay one move ahead of the other like a high stakes chess match. There was a lot of maneuvering but it definitely was no game.

A faction of the IRA attempt to kidnap Lord William Holmes, a member of the British Royal Family who also happens to be a Government minister, but the crime is thwarted by the courageous actions of Jack Ryan, an American tourist in London with his family. During the ensuing scuffle, Ryan shoots dead one of the terrorists, Patrick Miller. Miller's elder brother Sean is jailed for his part in the attack, but is rescued by his comrades, and vows vengeance on Ryan, who is a former marine and CIA operative. When Ryan realises that Sean Miller is targeting his family he returns to work for the CIA to help with the fight against terrorism.

There are a number of fairly obvious goofs and plot holes. No member of the British Royal Family could serve as a Government minister, as they are constitutionally obliged to remain politically neutral. If a foreign citizen were being made a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (one of the highest awards in the British honours system) he would be invited to a formal ceremony in Buckingham Palace to be knighted by the Queen in person. He would not be presented with the decoration in his own home by a junior member of the Royal Family. It seems unlikely that any Irish republican terror group would carry out an attack on American citizens on American soil, as to do so would risk losing the support their cause has long enjoyed among sections of the Irish-American community. As others have pointed out, it seems illogical for Ryan to take his family to their isolated summer home to get them away from Miller; doubtless the CIA could have found a safer location for them.

The film lacks the political implications of "Clear and Present Danger", Philip Noyce's next attempt to film a Tom Clancy thriller which involved Watergate-type misconduct by the President and his closest aides. (That film also starred Harrison Ford as Ryan). Despite the involvement of the IRA, "Patriot Games" makes no attempt to analyse the complexities of the Northern Ireland situation. The film also lacks any detailed characterisation. The moral divisions are straightforward- Ryan, his wife Cathy and his CIA colleagues are good and Miller and his gang are bad.

The film does, however, have a strong hero in Harrison Ford. Ford has always been good in the thriller genre, and gives another good performance here as Ryan, combining decency with a strong sense of intelligence. Anne Archer and Sean Bean are also good as Cathy and the villainous Miller. There is a good cameo from Polly Walker as Miller's glamorous but ruthless female associate Annette. Despite the occasional implausibilities of the plot, this is a tense and fast-moving thriller with some good action sequences. It is not Ford's best thriller (that must be either "Witness" or "The Fugitive"), but it is nevertheless a good one. 7/10

"Patriot Games" is an action movie like so many we have seen before, it's not a bad movie, it's an average one. I think it deserves 6.5 stars mainly because of the first half of the movie, which is interesting, but after that its quality diminish a lot.

The performances are OK, they are just what the film needed, the idea of the plot is interesting, but the biggest problem is that the movie last 15 minutes longer of what it was necessary.This movie would have been much better if it had only been a crime and thriller movie and not an action one.

The plot is about an ex CIA man Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) whose family is chased by a terrorist because Jack killed the terrorist's brother to save the life of an important British person.

"Patriot Games" is useful for killing time during one boring afternoon.

I think this film's greatness (it is indeed great) is a credit more to Clancy than the film makers, because writing is the most crucial part of any film. Unfortunately, a novel adapted to a film will almost never be as good as the book because there just isn't enough time or money to include everything and make everything look as good as it reads. This is evident here. Having said that they certainly didn't leave it to the story to support itself. Impressive heroics from Ford and a superb bad guy performance from Sean Bean (strikingly similar to his performance in the James Bond film Golden Eye) turned Clancy's classy classic book into a classy film. I was also impressed to discover that the director was none other than Australia's Phillip Noyce. As is also sadly common among films made from books, the plot was a little hard to follow due to the audience having to fill in the gaps that were left by the film makers not having time or money to include it all.