The Hunt for Red October [Film Club Extra 07]

[LimeGreenLegend 4,277]

The world lost a legend of cinema recently with the passing of Sir Sean Connery, so to celebrate his life and career the film club will be watching one of his classics.  I think it's a testament to his acting ability and range that, despite being best known for playing James Bond, none of his 007 films were nominated.  Instead there were nominations for a wide range of roles from across the decades, with the winner being nominated by @Squirrel, the Cold War thriller The Hunt for Red October.

Directed by action movie legend John McTiernan, who also bought us Predator, Die Hard and The Last Action Hero, and based on a novel by Tom Clancy, Red October tells the story of a Russian Navy captain, played by Connery, who wants to defect to the west along with his brand new state of the art submarine.  This is a tense action thriller with a great supporting cast including the likes of Alec Baldwin, Tim Curry, Sam Neill and James Earl Jones.  I haven't seen this in about twenty years, but I do recall being gripped the entire run time, so I can't wait to revisit this.  

once more we play our dangerous game

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As well as talk about the film, this would be a good place to share our favourite Connery moments.  For me, alongside his performance as James Bond and his Oscar winning turn in The Untouchables ("if they put one of yours in the hospital, you put one of theirs in the morgue") my favourite Connery moment, and one of my favourite quotes in all of film history, is from Highlander where he says, in his usual iconic accent, "I'm not Spanish.  I'm Egyptian."  

Sir Sean Connery 1930-2020

[Fido_le_muet 5,198]

Great. This is available on Amazon Prime Video if some of you have access to that. 

[Spinnaker1981 974]

 This movie actually has 2 of my favourite quotes from Connery:

one is this:

 It reminds me of the heady days of Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin when the world trembled at the sound of our rockets. Now they will tremble again - at the sound of our silence.

 

the other is just one word and it is right at the beggining: when he says Cold in Russian. 

 

[zmurko 7,622]

Wow, it's been many, many years since I've seen this movie and after watching it today, I now regret not seeing it more times.

What a thriller, literally. Thank you Mr.Clancy and Mr.McTiernan.

It quickly transports you right in the middle of the cold war and sets a great atmosphere without any nonsense and big plot setups/twists.

I really liked the transition from Red October crew speaking in russian to them speaking in english instead of them speaking with a funny russian english accent from start to finish.

Some great scenes setting and improving the general atmosphere of the movie, especially liked the russian crew singing when they went silent. "Let them shing."

Eventhough there's emphasis on the political aspect of the conflict, involving everyone from CIA, president, ambasadors, army to KGB (it's Tom Clancy novel afterall), there's plenty of submarine scenes, really depicting life and combat underwater. Viewer gets to experience what's it like when the only sense you can rely on is sound. I really enjoyed the underwater manouvers and strategy behind them, probably simplified for all of us who have never been on a submarine, but still, gets you thinking how a submarine commander mind works and what inputs he can use to plan his moves. Navigating Red October through the underwater canyons really keeps you on the edge of your seat.

Movie really keeps you on the edge through most of the scenes and provides many tense monents, when you're not sure if everything is gonna work or a WW III is gonna break out.

As far as actors go, I think casting was great and everyone did very well, especially Alec Baldwin, this must be his best performance I think. Some great characters in various roles, one that stands out for me is perhaps russian captain (Tupolev) of the submarine that chases down Red October.

Strong performance from Sean Connery as well, portraying a strongminded soviet naval legend. Though it is not his best from those that I've seen. That probably goes to his performance in The Rock in my opinion.

RIP Sir Sean Connery and thank you for your movies!

 

[CatManDoza 3,474]

Ooooo yes I'll defo be watching this one. With a month of staying at home and doing f*ck all. This will make for a perfect excuse to go to bed early and watch it

[djw180 6,980]

The Hunt for Red October

This is a good thriller with a plot that stays plausible. Whilst I know nothing about submarine technology, this just feels sensible, it doesn't go off on wild tangents like some thrillers do. I particularly like the way the sonar systems on the submarines, and their operators, play an important role without it getting too technical but still giving you an understanding of what is happening and why. It's got a great cast and is well made. There are a couple of things I'd like to have seen better explained. I didn't get why Ryan is in Britain at the beginning, what his actual job is and why he has such a high security clearance. I also didn't get where the saboteur at the end comes from, who he was and why he was doing it.

Then there is the issue of the accents. Sean Connery famously plays a Soviet sub commander with a Scottish accent in this. That does not matters; after all he won an Oscar playing an Irish-American cop with a Scottish accent in the Untouchables. It's that some of various Soviet characters have Russian sounding accents but others don't. Why the mix? Either have the English speaking actors use their natural voices to represent the range of accents you would have had from the many nations within the Soviet Union or have them all at least attempting to sound authentic. At the beginning I thought they were using English accents for the Russians, e.g. Peter Firth (the political officer) and later on Joss Ackland (the ambassador), with other accents for none-Russians, e.g. Connery as a Lithuanian. But then Sam Neil definitely seemed to be attempting a Russian accent. So that just did not make sense to me and it's the sort of thing that annoys me.

Overall, this type of film is never going to be one of my all time favourites. But it's very enjoyable to watch.

7/10.

[Con 5,719]

The Hunt For Red October 

Really strong performances by some amazing actors, Connery is at his finest and that was important since I really wasn't into the storyline. My ignorance or lack of desire to learn about the cold war probably went a long way with really digging deep into the story, so I focused on other things like the  cinematography and was impressed with the submarine sets and learning that they hired aeronautical designers to craft the modern look of the submarines. The defector storyline was kind of confusing to me because while I liked that they make it seem like Connery is on a terrorist mission and I loved his act of savagery at the start and that scene was really well done and I was delightfully shocked, i still didnt fully understand the point.  The suspense and thriller part of this film are in the "implications" of the personalities and that of the nuclear threat, so its more of a cerebral thriller and if you aren't into that, you might find this boring. I know there is plenty to analyze about why Connery would want to defect and all that , but digging into that will not elevate the film further for me. I thought it was a cool Submarine movie and while i ended up watching this weeks after it was assigned, the Kosatka purchase made watching it that much more fun, even if i wasn't blown away by the story. The filmmaker did a real good job with the pace and location transitions as they were both claustrophobic and expansive. 

Final Verdict...3/5...If you own a Kosatka in Los Santos you will appreciate this film a little more for the submarine element and I feel the film really works for a submarine themed cold war thriller. If that sentence does nothing for your cerebrum then skip this film completely. I did find it exciting enough in places for me to recommend this for the history buffs and submarine lovers everywhere. 

Edited December 25, 2020 by Con

[Spinnaker1981 974]

Well, I was a sucker for this movie since before the DVD era... I had it in CDI, which was great at showing pixels, specially under water😂

 

But, thruth be told, there is a lot more to all the characters than meets the eye. And Jack Ryan is something odd in the movie industry. He was performed by several different actors in several different movies, most of them very well known, like: Baldwin, Harrison Ford (Patriot Games and Clear and present Danger), Ben Affleck (Sum of all fears), or Chris Pine. 

Also, the Rainbow 6 saga is from a Jack Ryan book, and most of Clancy’s best works come from this character. 
 

Now, getting to know his story is very cool and all, but lets just say he goes from a recruit in the CIA and ends up being POTUS, that all along a dozen books (or more, didn’t count them). 
 

The first novel I ever read in The english was Rainbow 6, so this is a character that I know well, and he is very well portrayed by Baldwin. 
 

Now, As for the movie itself, I saw it right after reading the book, so its knif of an abstract to the book, and I really loved it, being one of the best, if not the best movie of all that came from that series. But it does lack some background information from some of the characters and what makes them tickle (the cook, Ramius, Mancuso or Tupolev). 
 

And the Soundtrack, it is so good! Doesn’t matter they are not actually singing in Russian, and that was one of the big critics of the movie back in the day, the use of the so called Red Army Choir! The soundtrack is still great! 
 

And, to be fair, I never noticed the accent problem with Connery in this movie, maybe because I am not an English native speaker, but it never bothered me the slightest... 😂