Product Details

• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Running time: 117 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
Let's see--he's been Han Solo in three films and Indiana Jones in three more. So why shouldn't Harrison Ford take on a new continuing character in Tom Clancy's CIA analyst Jack Ryan? In this film, directed by Phillip Noyce, Ford picked up the baton when Alec Baldwin, who played Ryan in The Hunt for Red October, opted for a Broadway role instead. In this film, Ryan and his family are on vacation when Ryan saves a member of the British royal family from attack by Irish terrorists. The next thing he knows, the Ryan clan has been targeted by the same terrorists, who invade his Maryland home. The film can't shed all of Clancy's lumbering prose, or his techno-dweeb fascination with spy satellites and the like. But no one is better than Ford at righteous heroism--and Sean Bean makes a suitably snakey villain. --Marshall Fine

From The New Yorker
Phillip Noyce's film, adapted from one of Tom Clancy's jillion-selling suspense novels, is a much more effective thriller than it has any right to be. The screenwriters, W. Peter Iliff and Donald Stewart, have eliminated much of the novel's hot air without entirely knocking the wind out of the material; the script tones down Clancy's right-wing ideology and gives the story some straightforward action-movie narrative drive. The plot, which pits Irish terrorists against an Annapolis history professor and sometime C.I.A. analyst named Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford), is ridiculous, boys'-adventure stuff, but the filmmakers almost put it across. Noyce handles the action sequences beautifully: they're lucid and exciting, and their construction has a kind of formal elegance that's oddly satisfying. (He's less successful with the scenes of the Ryan family's domestic bliss, which are meant to establish Jack's credentials as a champion of traditional values.) Ford brings a welcome trace of ambivalence to his character's heroics-a sense that Ryan isn't altogether proud of the lethal efficiency he displays when he's drawn into combat. Sean Bean, Richard Harris, and (especially) James Fox do nice work in supporting roles. This is an expert, entertaining genre picture. Noyce and his team serve Clancy's crude material well-too well, probably. Also with Anne Archer (who's awful), Thora Birch, James Earl Jones, Samuel L. Jackson, and Patrick Bergin. Cinematography by Donald McAlpine. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Slasher films a poor substitute
For sheer excitement on the edge of your not-so-easy chair, there's nothing like a good Jack Ryan story, and I think this is the best of them. The plot involves one of the most obsessed bad guys you'll ever see, a fanatically militant member of an IRA splinter group whose attack on the British royal family is thwarted almost unconsciously by Ryan, who is visiting England as a tourist/lecturer. Now ex-CIA, Ryan's family is nearby, and family is central in this tale of the cold-blooded world of international espionage and terrorism. The family angle is one that keeps the story so chilling throughout, as the terrorist's brother is shot to death by Ryan as he ruins their try on the royals, and our star villain then sets out to stalk Ryan and his wife and daughter.

The film moves at an almost perfect pace, and unveils to us some modern aspects of this shadowy world. For instance, even Ryan, played with understated perfection by Harrison Ford, is creeped out by his participation in a nighttime strike on a desert camp believed to be IRA training ground. In this scene he and several other jacket-and-tie types watch soldiers take out this nest of vipers a half-world away, thanks to infrared and satellite technology, all while detached voices calmly note "Target neutralized" and spies dressed like businessmen smile and nod while whispering to one another in thorough detachment from the blood and guts of the operation. All this technology and we are not removed from the days of the rich people perching on hills near the battles of Civil War days, sipping tea while viewing the entertainment.

I cannot give less than five stars to a film that draws me in so completely as this one, making me feel the tension with such clarity and indeed making it so easy to actually hate the villain. Yet the film strikes sour notes with the drunken Richard Harris's half-hearted performance as an IRA bigwig, and with the cliched ending moment of an otherwise superb boat chase at the film's climax. Two distracting moments would mean a score of 9 on a scale of 1 to 10, or, in Amazon terms, 4-1/2 stars. These being minor, a full five stars is quite reasonable. Nearly a perfect action film; even the understated music score is just so right that it can't be imagined being done any other way.

Clancy and Ford team up...
Tom Clancy's writing and Harrison Ford's acting team up for the first time in this film about CIA operative Jack Ryan. When Ryan makes a name for himself by saving a member of the British royal family from an assassination attempt, he finds himself and his family targeted by the IRA. Sounds strangely familiar to Oliver North and Abu Nidal... Anyway, the film is filled with great action sequences and interesting plot twists. A five star film.

Jack Ryan is the Man.
I really enjoy watching the films that Harrison Ford has made, but over the years have missed several of the films he has acted in. I've been trying to correct that by watching one of the Ford filmography that I haven't seen yet. That led me to watching PATRIOT GAMES. Before watching the film, I knew that the movie was based off of a Tom Clancy novel; starred Harrison Ford; and that it took place after THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER.

I really enjoyed watching the movie. It was filled with just enough suspense and fairly believable action to keep the film rolling along. The movie had a great cast (besides Ford, there's also James Earl Jones, Samuel L. Jackson, Sean Bean, Thora Birch, etc.). The movie involves Jack Ryan (Ford) saving a member of the English elite while vacationing in London and in the process kills a member of the IRA. The brother of said IRA member becomes obsessed with getting even with Ryan and tries to have him and his family murdered.

The film doesn't paint the IRA in a positive light at all and that in turn leads to some people thinking all Irish people are "bad". That's just not true. The Irish are great people and the IRA has done a few good things over the years. Nevertheless, the organization still has a reputation for being a terrorist group and unfortunately most of their good deeds have been overshadowed and outnumbered by the bad.

Anyway, PATRIOT GAMES is a decent action adventure/suspense movie. It's a good film to watch when you're not sure what you want to see.