Book review - "John McTiernan" by Larry Taylor

 I enjoyed this I just wish it was better, had more research done. Felt like an extended magazine article. Needed less skim analysis of the films, more of a deep dive.

Movie review - "Without Remorse" (2021) **

 Tom Clancy's novel was an interesting shaggy dog - a John Clark origin story, it was part stock get- revenge-against-drug-dealers-who-killed-his-lady, and then in his spare time he was off doing a Son Tay Raid type mission. Presumably this explains why a sexy concept - John Clark origin! - took to so long to be made because it's two stories not always easily co existing. The strength of the novel was the Vietnam section - Clark took part in a mission which failed but also it didn't - it was unexpected and fresh while the killing drug dealers was more standard. John Milius was going to make it in the 90s - it doesn't sound that exciting, but I'm sure it would've been more Clancy.

This loses so many key things in the book. For instance the book had Clark suffer the doubly whammy of losing his pregnant wife then a new love. This one just has the wife. The double whammy works gangbusters look at John Wick. Also no Vietnam setting robs the point of a man's frustration against the system, the power of the Russians, the decline in the military.  And it had nice touches like meeting Jack Ryan's dad.

This one has Clark's team knocked off one by one after a mission - which just didn't seem real. Would they really bother with it? Guy Pearce's oil politician is too obviously a villain. Jamie Bell is very good as a scowly intelligence guy.

The action scenes are same-y - darkly lit, bursts of gun fire. It lacks tension and to be honest it's hard to care. There were stakes in wanting ro rescue Vietnam POWs but not here. This is just revenge.

Some nice flashback moments to Clark's wife. That's about it.

TV review - "Jack Ryan" Season 1 (2018) ****

On the whole, this was fantastic. It's got impressive production values, it's very smart - the use of technology is skillful. Most importantly they nailed the character of Jack Ryan. He's a decent smart guy (maybe too smart - he never makes a mistake, only sometimes figures things out a bit too late).

He's got a super smart antagonist, and I love his relationship with Greer. Very well cast. The can't resist the temptation to have Ryan pull out his gun and do something bad ass every ep - the show needed a John Clark character to do this.

Oh and when Abbie Cornish comes in and says she's a doctor for infectious diseases, that kind of gives away what the final plan will involve.

Matt McCoy is in this!

Script review - "Rainbow Six" by Michael Schiffer and others (2003)

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.

Script review - "The Hunt for Red October" by Larry Ferguson

Solid adaptation of the Tom Clancy novel is an exciting read - well structured, pulling the action along. We meet Ramius, then Ryan, then the mission starts, Ryan figures out something's up. The complications feel logical and are well spread out - a political officer is murdered, the Soviets try to kill Ramius, the Soviets declare Ramius is insane and try to kill him, another Soviet sub is after them, there's a spy on the sub.

The leads get hero moments - Ryan figures it out and shoots the spy, Ramius does some captaincy wizardry, Mancuso (the US sub captain) gets to take over the Russian sub. I thought maybe more could've been done with the spy and the characters aren't terribly individual - that's why it helped so much that in the film version they were played by stars. They might've made more of Jack Ryan being a fish out of water, if you excuse the pun i.e. a nerd in a world comprising of men of action - but that was probably too tricky to attract a leading man.

Also, and this is in hindsight, I think the film benefited from John Milius' polish of Ramius' dialogue, giving it a historical poetic flair - this draft it's a little dull. But a strong script - it didn't get my heart racing the way say Patriot Games and Sum of All Fears did but it still works.

Movie review - "Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit" (2014) **

Really, really annoying movie because once upon a time I was into Jack Ryan novels in a big way and I've always enjoyed the movie adaptations, but they completely stuffed it. There was nothing wrong with the idea of doing a Ryan origin story - sure, they'd already turned the movie of The Sum of All Fears into one, but why not do it again? But instead of using one of the best selling source novels, several of which remain unfilmed, they thought they'd come up with an original story - and it's a crap one.

It feels as though this was done on the cheap, too. I guess Chris Pine isn't that cheap, and Ken Branagh could probably charge a little more after Thor, and Keira Knightley must have been paid something to hold her nose - but surely Kevin Costner doesn't cost that much? There's not really many other prominent characters in the movie. Spectacle is thin on the ground - there is a decent chase through the streets of Moscow and later one through New York, but in general television does this a lot better.

TV does story telling better too - which here is noticeably poor. The biggest flaw more me is the character of Ryan. The whole point of Jack Ryan was that he was a guy next door, a pencil pusher and family man who occasionally got caught in amazing adventures - an antidote to James Bond. He wanted to be a soldier but couldn't after being injured - he went into finance and made a quick fortune, then turned to academia, which led to a career in the CIA. He had a bad back, a fear of flying, a strong Irish Catholic influence, a keenly developed sense of intelligence and history - it's an interesting character. He's not gung ho Mr Macho killer - that job is given to John Clarke.

And the movies had done a decent enough job of depicting that until now - he wasn't really an ordinary guy but he was an action movie genre's version of an ordinary guy. (This is why Harrison Ford was so good).

Here Jack Ryan is just another super hero. Which might have worked (though what's the point?) but the filmmakers try to have their cake and eat it too by having him say "I'm just an analyst" and "I'm just an ordinary person" a few times. Well he isn't. For starters he enlists in the army after September 11, which makes him a moron and not true to character. Then he finishes his PhD and joins Wall Street and becomes part of the CIA because of his ability to... read patterns?  Then he's sent on a mission to Russia and someone tries to kill him only Ryan gets in first in a ridiculous Daniel Craig James Bond type sequence.

This for me was the turning point of the film - when it showed that the filmmakers didn't have a vision. Because after that Pine/Ryan meets mentor Kevin Costner (played someone called Thomas Harper not in the novels... why not use John Clarke? Or Admiral Greer?) and goes on about how hard it was to kill someone the first time, you think "that's not true you found it easy, you looked like a bad ass". Then there's this horrible bit where Costner talks about his first time killing someone, an innocent bystander, and you're wondering how you're meant to take that character, who is a mentor but also distant, and there's no warmth (nothing to compare to what James Earl Jones and Morgan Freeman brought).

Then we see Ryan "analyse" stuff - he really seems to brain storm and kick ideas around and guess what the baddies are up to without much proof, but he always guesses right. And for all his inexperience he manages to rescue Keira from assassins and then later on stop a terrorist by engaging in a motorbike chase and a fight on a moving truck. It's ridiculous.

So much of this is dumb. Keira Knightley looks beautiful but her role is horrible; they don't even show a courtship, just them meeting and bang they're in love - and she thinks he's having an affair (he ducks away to see Sorry Wrong Number at a revival house... way to go with updating the character), then she follows him to Moscow so she can be kidnapped (the best sequence in the movie to be fair) then she is rescued and doesn't do anything in the last third.

The action stuff lacks balls. Clancy never did - he set off an atomic bomb in the US in Sum of All Fears and had a plane crash into the White House in Debt of Honour (predicting September 11) and killed off leading characters. This is all tentative - all the goodies live the baddies die Wall Street is saved. No big stakes no nothing. It's annoying - because Ryan is such a good character who's had interesting adventures. But they completely stuffed it.

Script review – “Clear and Present Danger” (1991 draft) by John Milius

Interesting to compare with the later film, and much more faithful to the novel: it’s got a longer introduction, discovering the murders on the boat, including the fake hanging sequence from the book; the part of Jack Ryan is greatly reduced (he isn’t in the ambush – actually he’s not really needed for the story to work, Clark could have done it all); Dan Murray doesn't die; the ending is different – actually it’s all different. The best bit is when the Americans go on their mission and start shooting people then it goes haywire. I also really liked the ending where Cortez kills Cutter in Washington out of revenge or what Ryan's done, but is then killed himself by some drug addicted kids who mug him. Other than that it’s not too involving – I liked the film, and believe they were right to make the changes they did, especially departing from the novel.

Movie review – “The Hunt for Red October” (1990) *** 1/2

Confident big budget version of Tom Clancy’s best seller done in the style of classical Hollywood – plenty of stars, strong story. Sean Connery plays his Russian with a wig and Scottish accent but he has plenty of authority; also strong are Sam Neill, Richard Jordon, Joss Ackland, Scott Glenn. Alec Baldwin is fine as Jack Ryan – it’s not much of a role here (he plays a nerd, basically), but he’s believably intelligent and better than Ben Affleck.

John Milius apparently worked on some of the Russian scenes and the dialogue has a Milius-esque flavour (in hindsight). My favourite bit though is during the final attack with Connery has made this big decision and a missile is on its way and he starts a casual chat with Alec Baldwin – I enjoyed this display of how some people keep relaxed under pressure.

The twists and turns keep you watching, though surprisingly the final explosion/shoot out is a bit of a damp squid. As an aside, I always loved the Mad magazine version of this story where Jack Ryan explains he knows all about Ramius from one meeting “because you can learn a lot about someone when you dance with them until dawn”.