I've never read Rainbow Six - I've looked at the synopsis on line and it feels slightly different to others in the Tom Clancy book, a wish fulfillment piece about a super efficient anti-terrorist organisation that comes up against a vicious enemy...a group of fanatical environmentalists (something a few tech writers were into at the time, eg Michael Crichton in State of Fear). It's all Jon Clark, no Jack Ryan.
This script starts off brilliantly with a superb opening sequence where Clark foils an airline hijacking with the help of a plucky airline steward... it's got lots of twists and turns and was really well done. But the whole thing could have been lopped off the film. They didn't bring back the characters - not even the plucky stewardess as a love interest. It's like a Bond film opening.
Then Clark is given his mission to start up his hit squad. They're particularly unmemorable though ethnically diverse - a Muslim and a Jew banter, there's a black guy and a sexy Asian woman introduced in her underpants. Oh and there's Chavez from the books - who doesn't have a romance with Clark's daughter here (maybe they wanted to be able to cast Clark young though he still has a wife). The wife is involved in researching aging.
The rest of it feels stock - his nemesis foreign agent Popov who isn't that bad, the megalomaniac villains. The action scenes are extremely well written but I didn't like it. To me Clancy stories are uber realistic seeming - ordinary professionals in tough situations, done with heaps of research. Of course Jack Ryan wasn't ordinary but he was compared to the normal action heroes - he was married, worked at his desk, was academic. John Clark without Jack Ryan to ground him just comes across as silly and this plot feels over the top.
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