Come Sail Away with Me
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Foresight
Setting Sail with Low Expectations
The Hunt for Red October (1990) Directed by John McTiernan
Baggage tags:
The Hunt for Red October (1984 novel), Rainbow Six (1998 novel), John McTiernan's Criminal History
Add the American dream passage from the book and movie - compare
Before watching the classic Cold War submarine thriller, The Hunt for Red October, I decided to tackle the source material, Tom Clancy's first novel (1984) of the same title.
Sometimes, when an author writes their first novel, lightning strikes.
Other times, something much slower does—like, say, a children's carousel - destined to go around in slow, endless circles… like a lost submarine, adrift with no port in sight.
In Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October, it was the latter. A 'thriller' about a renegade Russian submarine so punishingly slow, I considered leaving it unfinished more than once.
To 13-year-old me, Tom Clancy was the fucking man. Three years before 9/11 he published Rainbow Six, a book about an international counterterrorism unit. After 9/11, I was naturally drawn to a story about a special ops team traveling the globe and taking out bad guys.
The book itself was a slog though - it took 300 pages for something exciting to happen. When it finally did—a group of terrorists takes over an amusement park in Germany—it was genuinely compelling. Alas, I wasn’t about to wade through another 300 pages of techno-military babble just for a few more bursts of action. Suffice to say, I never finished it.
Tom Clancy, it would seem, perfected the blueprint back in 1984 with The Hunt for Red October. It’s 500 pages of slow-moving Cold War maneuvers leading to what is, to his credit, a truly spectacular finale. This time, I stuck it out so I could see how the movie would compare.
The film adaptation of The Hunt for Red October (1990) stars Alec Baldwin and Sean Connery. Two of the greats in their absolute prime. It was nominated for three Academy Awards (winning Best Sound Editing) and was directed by my favorite action director-slash-convicted felon: John McTiernan.
John McTiernan movies have grossed over $1 billion worldwide. He's the director of beloved action classics like Die Hard and Predator. But the critically reviled Rollerball (2002) ultimately led to his incarceration. Rollerball was so cursed it got him ensnared in a federal wiretapping scandal. (He hired a PI to illegally wiretap his producer's phone because he thought they were fucking him over.) John didn’t just get a slap on the wrist, either. He served real time: in 2010 he was sentenced to 365 days (which, in millions, is coincidentally about what Die Hard with a Vengeance grossed during its theatrical run).
Back in 1990, though, McTiernan was at the height of his powers. He was riding a wave of critical and commercial success following Die Hard, and The Hunt for Red October was his direct follow-up.
After slogging through the novel, I’m less excited than I was before—but with Baldwin, Connery, and McTiernan at the helm, there’s hope this submarine moves a hell of a lot faster onscreen.
Let's unpack The Hunt for Red October.
Hindsight
The Torpedo Self Destructs
The Hunt for Red October (1990)
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| "Hello, I'm Captain Ramius and I'm actually speaking Russian but when you hear it, it will sound like English with a Scottish accent." |
Well, shit.
Watching McTiernan’s film adaptation of The Hunt for Red October immediately sent the book up in my esteem. Turns out the book really is always better — even when you didn’t particularly like the book and the movie is Academy nominated. I recognize the lack of logic in my observation, but it’s true. (And it makes more sense than my lightning-carousel metaphor earlier…)
Right off the bat, the film does something remarkable I’ve never seen repeated. It opens aboard the Red October with Captain Ramius (Sean Connery) and his crew speaking Russian. Then, with a simple, smart camera push-in on an actor’s face and pull-out, the dialogue seamlessly transitions to English. This completely breaks the fourth wall, trusting the audience to understand the reality (they are speaking Russian) while allowing the film to proceed in English for accessibility. It’s weird, but it works — brilliantly. This completely avoids the awkwardness of phonetically accented English you get in similar movies, like K-19: The Widowmaker. And crucially, it allows Sean Connery to command his Soviet submarine in his natural, authoritative Scottish brogue. Honestly, it blows my mind no one else has copied this.
The film opens with a booming Russian anthem, and the pacing immediately feels brisker than the book's slow crawl. Without Clancy’s dense prose, the narrative unspools faster than a roll of toilet paper your cat got hold of. But it turns out cutting all the technical detail also cuts a lot of the stakes — the tension of the submarine hunt gets flattened, and the movie ends up feeling rote and unsatisfying.
The cast mostly keeps this ship from sinking. Alongside Connery and Baldwin, actors Sam Neill, Tim Curry, Scott Glenn, and James Earl Jones all receive high billing. Scott Glenn is particularly convincing as Commander Mancuso of the USS Dallas, embodying the pragmatic American counterpart to Ramius with ease. He fits right into the steady, competent military types he plays so well.
The actors bring more depth to the characters than Clancy, who writes them drier than a Saltine in the Sahara. But not every casting choice lands. Tim Curry, as a Russian ship’s doctor, is completely unconvincing. While every other member of the Russian cast plays stoicism, Curry looks legitimately scared just to be on set. Not ideal for someone playing a calm, authoritative Soviet doctor.
Then there's our protagonist Jack Ryan, played by Alec Baldwin. The film rushes his transition from CIA analyst behind a desk to a guy navigating the frontlines of a Cold War naval standoff. Baldwin does his best, but Ryan’s whole vibe feels like Randal from Clerks muttering, "I'm not even supposed to be here today," except it’s infinitely less relatable. When your protagonist starts as a wealthy CIA analyst, you’ve got to work a little harder to make the audience root for him.
With McTiernan directing, I expected at least one standout action set piece. The finale — a submarine chase, sonar tracking, and a torpedo shootout — should have been it. But it lacks the pulse-pounding suspense of the novel’s climax. Sometimes, tension just builds better on the page than it does on the screen.
All I really wanted from the movie was Cold War tension delivered at the speed of a Happy Meal. Sure, the pacing issues were solved — but too much got lost in the process.
Would I have enjoyed the movie more if I hadn’t read the book first? Probably.
But that’s not how we do things here.
Final Take:
I don't recommend The Hunt for Red October — book or movie — to anyone.
If you're craving underwater military drama and action, just watch Das Boot.
