Giochi di potere

I have wanted to see this film for quite a while now. Ive seen The Hunt For Red October(1990), and Clear and Present Danger(1994), and Patriot Games is much better than them. Patriot Games is a great thinking man's thriller, although its much less difficult to follow than "Clear and Present Danger". It has plenty of suspense and action, and Ford's acting is terrific. I am so surprised that Patriot Games is often considered the worst Clancy film, and "The Hunt For Red October" considered the best, but I think it should be the other way around. Overall a great suspenseful movie. 9 out of 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.

Patriot Games is a more than serviceable thriller, perhaps a bit out of date when viewing it now, but still a very effective good against evil piece.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.

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.