Review of PATRIOT GAMES

PATRIOT GAMES

Action, counterterrorism, Harrison Ford.  Released 1992

The film starts with JACK RYAN (Harrison Ford) drinking champagne with his wife in a pleasant, family-friendly scene in their hotel bedroom.  Wink, wink. Ryan, a retired CIA agent and professor at the Naval Academy, is on vacation in London with his family. This vacation is rudely interrupted when a car bomb explodes. An ultra-violent IRA splinter group is trying to assassinate LORD WILLIAM HOLMS, a British official and apparently a member of the royal family. Ryan leaps into the fray and ends up killing PATRICK MILLER, one of the terrorists. Patrick's brother, SEAN MILLER, sees Ryan kill Patrick and, being a good psychotic, determines to kill Ryan and his wife and daughter for good measure. Yes, Sean is arrested and sent to prison. Yes, Ryan goes back to the USA, thousands of miles away. But those details can't stop Sean, or there wouldn't be any movie.

Like HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, Patriot Games is based on a Tom Clancy book. In  my limited experience, movies made from his books are much better than the books themselves.

The movie has some cute lines. A terrorist is in bed with a woman he just picked up. She says, "Wait a minute. I have to get something." He says, "But darlin', you're not goin' to make me wear one of those rubbers. That's a sin." (SPOILER ALERT--he doesn't have to wear the rubber. In fact, he never wears a rubber again.)

It takes eight minutes from the opening until you first see a gun, so lovers of violence whose attention span is less than that shouldn't watch the movie. But once the violence starts, it goes full steam. Sean and his colleague, KEVIN O'DONNELL, kill so many people (including other terrorists) and for so little reason, it gets tiring. Yes, psychopaths are a staple of action movies, but enough is enough. Harrison Ford is entertaining, but half of his performance is a minimally sedated Han Solo, and the other half is a constipated academic. James Earl Jones is (as always) wonderful, but he has only a minor role.

A scene near the end shows the terrorists trying to kill Ryan in his own house. This should be exciting, but you know they will fail. The final scene, Ryan chasing a terrorist in a boat, is just plain stupid.

In spite of these criticisms, most of the movie is exciting. Harrison Ford is always fun to watch, there are some interesting twists, and the plot moves well. Most of the film got my pulse up to a run.  I give it ++++.

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Review of '24'

24

JACK BAUER is a CTU (Counter-terrorism Unit) agent who has discovered a plot to assassinate the first serious black presidential contender, DAVID PALMER. The series consists of each of twenty-four hours of the day of the California primaries, the day Palmer is expected to secure the nomination. When Bauer starts investigating, a number of agents and bystanders are murdered, his wife, TERI and daughter, KIM are kidnapped, and he discovers that people he works with are likely involved with this whole deadly plot. Moreover, it turns out that he is as much a target for assassination as is Palmer.

Jack has a lot on his hands. After 24 hours without sleep, I can scarcely walk, let alone perform heroic feats and shoot bad guys. Yet he manages, and the action continues without a letup.

Maybe there should be a letup. Moments of calm heighten the periods of action. 24 has no breaks for humor, and few for emotion. The series consists of one long adrenalin rush. However, in general, the direction is good.  I particularly like the effective use of split screens.

The plot is much too complicated to summarize with more than the paragraph above, but it's laid out gradually and logically, so that it's easy to understand what's happening. There are several twists and surprises with shameless misleading by the director (for example, ominous music for someone who turns out to be innocent.) After a while, I could predict who was going to be killed and who would survive. At least most of the time.

The character of Palmer (played by Dennis Haysbert, perhaps best known as the Allstate man though he has a broad filmography) annoyed me.  Like the black president in 2012, he was too damn noble. A person so saintly could never become president of the USA. Better a positive stereotype of black people than a negative one, but best of all is no stereotype. However,  his wife turns out to be a royal bitch, which may be a deliberate tactic to balance Palmer's unbelievable sense of morality.

The old Palm Pilot phones in the first series are sort of cute, but I can't imagine them doing what's portrayed.

In about the middle of the series, I grew tired of the continual crises, just one damn thing after another. Yet the show's creators managed to inject enough suspense each time that I never even considered stopping.

The very last hour disappointed me. While as exciting as the earlier episodes, the plot twists and character actions felt contrived and not justified by what was portrayed earlier. A new thread was introduced and left unresolved, an obvious ploy for a sequel.  At the very end, a major character was killed off, which I thought was dumb. (There is an alternate ending where the character survives and a commentary explaining why the producers wanted her dead, but none of it was convincing.)

As entertainment, this is good but not great. I enjoyed it, but I don't know if I'll bother with the sequels. As a workout video, it's superb. I give it +++++ - it will get your pulse up to a sprint. If you see it, let me know what you think.