It’s sad, really, when you think about it. The Hunt For Red October was a magnificent film, and it established a believable world and mythology that could well have launched Jack Ryan into a decades-long career as the American version of James Bond. All of the elements were established, as was a very workable cast of characters. But somewhere, somehow, something went terribly astray. Instead of giving us another international story of intrigue and global consequences, we’re left with a very pedestrian story about revenge. To make the sin worse, we get Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan and never really give him anything great to do. OK, there are a couple of moments that in the end only serve to tease us as to what was possible. Phillip Noyce takes over for John McTieman as the director. He gave us an almost equal cast but forgot to bring the movie along for the ride. There’s nothing terribly clever or original about the story. You can almost hear James Cagney screaming “You dirty rats. You killed my brother…” as the villain Sean Miller abandons his entire blood oath and mission to get revenge on Ryan.

Jack Ryan (Ford) is in England with his family when a rogue cell of the IRA makes a hit against a member of the Royal Family. Ryan interferes with the plot and ends up killing a couple of the would-be assassins, including the brother of mission leader Sean Miller (Bean). The terrorist is broken out of prison while being transported, but instead of returning to his blood battle against England, he seeks out Jack Ryan to kill him and his family to avenge the death of his younger brother.

If this all sounds rather tired, that’s because it is. The only thing that manages to save the film at all is the cast. Harrison Ford is going to deliver no matter what you give him, but even he has a hard time not appearing bored in this film. He’s far better than Alec Baldwin is, and his presence makes Ryan an entirely different character, more of an action hero with a brain. Sean Bean is also a tremendously gifted actor who is placed in an unenviable position of playing completely counter to logic. Richard Harris is dangled in front of us, providing his usual acting superiority only to be relegated to a stereotypical character who makes only a couple of brief and totally awkward appearances. Even Samuel Jackson can’t save this film.

Video

Patriot Games is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1. Even though this is a couple of years more recent, this transfer does not stand up to Red October. You get the same AVC MPEG-4 codec but not the same results in this 1080p transfer. I don’t know if it was the film’s lighting or a stylistic choice, but I never get a sense of a natural setting here. Often images are somewhat overexposed, while colors appear muted. Black levels don’t appear to be anything better than standard definition. There’s a ton of grain here, and I’m talking far more than the print’s natural texture. Either someone messed up in the process of the print, or the transfer was bungled. As a DVD this would have been a pretty good transfer, but with my average 30+ mbps I expected more.

Audio

The DTS HD 5.1 Master Lossless Audio track is a far cry from the DVD release. Here I got the bang for my buck I was expecting. James Horner delivers an eerie Celtic narrative using notes instead of words. It’s an absolutely beautiful score and at above 3 mbps this uncompressed rendition is the sweetest part of the film. Dialog comes through just fine, and everything appears to be placed where it should be. The opening firefight in England is a pretty good example of a well thought out use of surrounds. The bullets fly, and you’re going to have to resist that urge to duck. The real flaw here can be found in the sub range. Even with all of the things blowing up, I didn’t get much more than a peep out of my sub.

Special Features

• Patriot Games Up Close: Again this is taken from the original DVD release and not updated to HD. It’s a 25 minute collection of interviews and some behind the scenes footage. This film was made almost together with Clear And Present Danger, so there is some overlap.

Final Thoughts

Perhaps I’m being a little harsh on this film. I remember liking it a bit more the first time around. Now, I’ve watched three of these films pretty much back to back and for the first time in HD. Suddenly I’m comparing this film with the first, and the flaws just seem to jump off of the screen. Maybe it’s not really fair to compare the two like that. I don’t know. That’s what Paramount gets for releasing them all together and spending far less time and effort on this transfer than they did on Red October. That tells me that the powers that be over at Paramount don’t consider these films in the same league, so why should I? It makes sense to have this entire collection, and viewed on its own, Patriot Games is an above average thrill ride. Can I help it if I expected more? Maybe Red October was just so good that the odds of any followup standing up “are just so remote that I have trouble saying it.”