movie review the hunt for red october

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The hunt for red october, common sense media reviewers.

Book-based Cold War submarine drama is tense and thrilling.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Studying and knowing your subject well helps you m

Jack Ryan is an academic achiever who knows his su

A man smashes another's head into a table, breakin

A minor character mentions whales humping. A line

"Hell," "ass," "butt," "goddamn," "Jesus," "s--t,"

Many secondary and minor characters smoke frequent

Parents need to know that The Hunt for Red October is a tense submarine drama based on a Tom Clancy novel. There are a couple of gunfights; blood is seen two or three times, although it's not gory; and one character murders by breaking another's neck. Profanity is infrequent but varied, with "hell" half a…

Positive Messages

Studying and knowing your subject well helps you make the right decisions. When the stakes are high, the rewards are great, so you have to be willing to take chances.

Positive Role Models

Jack Ryan is an academic achiever who knows his subject well and is able to put his knowledge into action to good effect. He's also clever and brave. Marko Ramius is willing to risk everything and ruthlessly goes after his goals. He's also very clever but fearless. The many supporting characters all try to fulfill their duties and make the right decisions.

Violence & Scariness

A man smashes another's head into a table, breaking his neck and killing him. Two gunfights; blood from gunshot wounds two or three times. A death scene is quiet and not gory. A plane crashes into an aircraft carrier in a fiery explosion.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A minor character mentions whales humping. A line references the Playmate of the Month.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

"Hell," "ass," "butt," "goddamn," "Jesus," "s--t," and "son of a bitch." "Take a dump" twice.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Many secondary and minor characters smoke frequently. Ryan accepts a cigarette as a goodwill gesture and, after a puff, looks ill and coughs. Adults are occasionally seen with drinks that aren't identified but look like alcohol.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Hunt for Red October is a tense submarine drama based on a Tom Clancy novel. There are a couple of gunfights; blood is seen two or three times, although it's not gory; and one character murders by breaking another's neck. Profanity is infrequent but varied, with "hell" half a dozen times and stronger words such as "s--t" and "ass" once each. A minor character mentions whales humping. A line references the Playmate of the Month. It's a good starting point for talking about the Cold War since the story arises entirely from tense Soviet/American relations, with each regarding the other as the enemy. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (2)
• Kids say (11)

Based on 2 parent reviews

Fantastic movie

The hunt for red october, what's the story.

A previously unknown Russian nuclear sub called the Red October is detected on-course for the East Coast of the United States. While the U.S. submarine fleet tries to locate the sub, CIA analyst Jack Ryan ( Alec Baldwin ) is convinced that its commander, Marko Ramius ( Sean Connery ), is trying to defect to the West. But if Ryan is wrong and the U.S. fleet can't find and stop the sub, the Soviet Union would have first-strike capability just off America's shores. Ryan suddenly finds himself in the middle of a deadly game of chess between two superpowers on the brink of nuclear war.

Is It Any Good?

THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER keeps tension and suspense front and center. The plot builds nicely, keeping you guessing as it moves quickly along. The tight writing and strong acting make much of essentially watching a chess game in which players try to guess the others' next moves. Every ounce of Sean Connery's charisma is on display, and a young Alec Baldwin is fun to watch as a nerdy government analyst who's a bit out of his depth. Both are strongly supported by the likes of Sam Neill, Stellan Skarsgård, James Earl Jones, Tim Curry, and more.

Although the content is fine for most tweens, it's more likely to be enjoyed by teens who can appreciate tension as a dramatic device. Navy and submarine buffs also will enjoy the depictions of strategizing, navigating, and sonar operations in the cramped confines of both Russian and American subs. It's fun to see what cutting-edge technology was like 30 years ago, and it's also a bit of a history lesson about the tensions of the Cold War, reminding us of how much U.S./Soviet tension was a huge backdrop to life then.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the Cold War. What was it about? How did it begin and end?

Have you seen any other movies, played any games, or read any books with Jack Ryan as a character? How does this one compare? Which is your favorite?

Movies set in submarines usually have a lot of tension. Why is that? What do you think life on a submarine is really like?

Movie Details

• In theaters : March 2, 1990
• On DVD or streaming : December 1, 1998
• Cast : Sean Connery , Alec Baldwin , James Earl Jones
• Director : John McTiernan
• Inclusion Information : Black actors, Indigenous actors
• Studios : Paramount Pictures , Mace Neufeld Productions , Nina Saxon Film Design
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : History
• Run time : 134 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG
• Award : Academy Award
• Last updated : December 7, 2023

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• Cast & crew
• User reviews

The Hunt for Red October

In November 1984, the Soviet Union's best submarine captain violates orders and heads for the U.S. in a new undetectable sub. The American CIA and military must quickly determine: Is he tryi... Read all In November 1984, the Soviet Union's best submarine captain violates orders and heads for the U.S. in a new undetectable sub. The American CIA and military must quickly determine: Is he trying to defect or to start a war? In November 1984, the Soviet Union's best submarine captain violates orders and heads for the U.S. in a new undetectable sub. The American CIA and military must quickly determine: Is he trying to defect or to start a war?

• John McTiernan
• Larry Ferguson
• Donald E. Stewart
• Sean Connery
• Alec Baldwin
• Scott Glenn
• 382 User reviews
• 93 Critic reviews
• 58 Metascore
• 3 wins & 8 nominations total

• Marko Ramius

• Bart Mancuso

• Captain Borodin

• Admiral Greer

• Andrei Lysenko

• Jeffrey Pelt

• Seaman Jones

• Captain Tupolev

• Bill Steiner
• Chief of the Boat

• Admiral Painter
• (as Fred Dalton Thompson)

• Captain Davenport

• Seaman Beaumont - USS Dallas
• Lt. Comm. Thompson - USS Dallas
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

More like this

Did you know

• Trivia Sir Sean Connery spent time underway aboard the U.S.S. Puffer (S.S.N. 652) preparing for his role. He was given Commander status, and allowed to give commands while underway (with the Captain beside him).
• Goofs When Ramius asks Ryan (in Russian) "You speak Russian?", the Russian line that Sean Connery actually says is "Govaryu po russki?" This means, "I speak Russian?", and is also grammatically incorrect as a question. The correct line should have been like "Vy govarite po russki?"

Jeffrey Pelt : Listen, I'm a politician, which means I'm a cheat and a liar, and when I'm not kissing babies, I'm stealing their lollipops. But it also means I keep my options open.

• Crazy credits Stanley (Sally Ryan's stuffed bear) is credited as "Himself"
• Alternate versions SPOILER: In its original theatrical run, Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) says "A fucking cook!" upon discovering the saboteur. However, on subsequent home video releases, the word "fucking" is replaced by "Goddamn." "Goddamn" is heard in at least some 35mm prints.
• Connections Edited into JAG: Silent Service (1999)
• Soundtracks The Anthem of the Soviet Union Music by Aleksandr Aleksandrov (as A.V. Aleksandrov) Lyrics by Gabriel Ureklyan (as G.A. El-Reghistan) and Sergey Mikhalkov (as S.V. Mikhalkov)

User reviews 382

• Jul 5, 2002
• How long is The Hunt for Red October? Powered by Alexa
• What is 'The Hunt for Red October' about?
• Is 'The Hunt for Red October' based on a book?
• Who is Yuri Gagarin, the person Ramius refers to when reading the substituted orders to the crew?
• March 2, 1990 (United States)
• United States
• Jagd auf Roter Oktober
• Lake James, Burke County, North Carolina, USA (Final scene with Ryan and Ramius.)
• Paramount Pictures
• Mace Neufeld Productions
• Nina Saxon Film Design
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $30,000,000 (estimated)
• $122,012,643
• $17,161,835
• Mar 4, 1990
• $200,512,643

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 15 minutes

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The Hunt for Red October Reviews

...a consistently watchable yet erratically-paced drama...

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 22, 2023

It's a tad obsolete, but that does not impede it from being tremendously dynamic and entertaining. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Nov 12, 2022

As an espionage thriller, I must say, it has a tension that runs against the clock like a torpedo under the sea as it outlines its plot of diplomacy and naval strategy in the twilight of the Cold War. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Aug 25, 2022

If you liked the Cold War, you'll love The Hunt for Red October.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 18, 2021

...The Hunt for Red October still makes sense in a Boys' Own way even if the hopeful world described has long vanished...

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 2, 2021

With enough of a corkscrew plot to keep anyone guessing and with plenty of edge-of-your-seat suspense, this high-stakes espionage thriller never misses a beat.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Sep 14, 2020

With a chilly majesty to its scale despite its confined locations, this is a supremely confident film with the courage of its convictions as the story slowly and steadily unfolds. 30 years on it still packs a powerful punch, the tension ratcheting.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 10, 2018

It's to McTiernan's credit that so much of this is made intense. Every silence on board the Russian sub, whether they're squeaking through a narrow underwater canyon or sending out a single sonar ping, seems occasion to hold your breath.

Full Review | Oct 18, 2018

Coupled with Connery's magnetic performance, that's enough to make The Hunt for Red October as watchable today as it was during its 1990 release.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 8, 2018

the kind of action thriller that is rarely made today-one that emphasizes intellect and logic, intuition and political maneuvering over might and brawn

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 17, 2018

Clancy is known for writing difficult books, but the movie makes plausible a preposterous situation because of Baldwin's convincing, low-key approach to being a film hero.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 11, 2015

You may not be limp from accumulated tension when this hunt is over, but its cautiously upbeat global message leaves a satisfying glow and it operates with a crackerjack premise.

Full Review | Feb 11, 2015

The Hunt for Red October is a happy cinematic event, the first motion picture that allows us to experience the sweaty-palm thrills of the Cold War without worrying that the world will blow up this year.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 11, 2015

An exciting techno-suspense thriller with a hollow center.

Though Hunt shows fitful signs of life, it lacks the human drama of Das Boot, the technical dazzle of The Abyss and the old-fashioned brio of Run Silent, Run Deep.

Based on Tom Clancy`s phenomenally successful techno-thriller novel, The Hunt for Red October proves that a film can equal, if not surpass, the intrigue and excitement of the story it is based on.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 11, 2015

Like the nuclear submarine it's named after, The Hunt for Red October is big, shiny, and expensive. But it's also hard, cold, and cumbersome, just when it's trying hardest to be likable and even friendly.

Red October is an idealized, dreamy fantasy of life in the business world-harmless as airplane reading, a bit dull on the big screen.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 11, 2015

This is first-rate adventure stuff, an all-missions-accomplished submarine movie.

The Hunt for Red October is overplotted and sometimes implausible, but McTiernan's clipped style and lavish budget help it through the choppier waters.

The Hunt for Red October

The Hunt for Red October is a terrific adventure yarn. Tom Clancy's 1984 Cold War thriller has been thoughtfully adapted to reflect the mellowing in the US-Soviet relationship.

By Variety Staff

Variety Staff

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The Hunt for Red October is a terrific adventure yarn. Tom Clancy’s 1984 Cold War thriller has been thoughtfully adapted to reflect the mellowing in the US-Soviet relationship.

Sean Connery is splendid as the renegade Soviet nuclear sub captain pursued by CIA analyst Alec Baldwin and the fleets of both superpowers as he heads for the coast of Maine. The filmmakers have wisely opted to keep the story set in 1984 – ‘shortly before Gorbachev came to power’, as the opening title puts it.

Looking magnificent in his captain’s uniform and white beard, Connery scores as the Lithuanian Marko Ramius, a coldblooded killer and a meditator on Hindu scripture.

Baldwin’s intelligent and likable performance makes his Walter Mittyish character come alive. He’s combating not only the bulk of the Soviet fleet but also the reflexive anti- Communist mentality of most pursuing on the US side – not including his wise and avuncular CIA superior James Earl Jones.

Popular on Variety

The Industrial Light & Magic special visual effects unit does yeoman work in staging the action with cliffhanger intensity.

1990: Best Sound Effects Editing.

Nominations: Best Editing, Sound

• Production: Paramount. Dir John McTiernan; Producer Mace Neufeld; Screenplay Larry Ferguson, Donald Stewart, [John Milius]; Camera Jan De Bont; Editor Dennis Virkler, John Wright; Music Basil Poledouris Art Dir Terence Marsh
• Crew: (Color) Widescreen. Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1990. Running time: 137 MIN.
• With: Sean Connery Alec Baldwin Scott Glenn Sam Neill James Earl Jones Joss Ackland

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Summary A new technologically-superior Soviet nuclear sub, the Red October, is heading for the U.S. coast under the command of Captain Marko Ramius (Connery). The American government thinks Ramius is planning to attack. A lone CIA analyst (Baldwin) has a different idea: he thinks Ramius is planning to defect, but he has only a few hours to find ... Read More

Directed By : John McTiernan

Written By : Tom Clancy, Larry Ferguson, Donald E. Stewart, David Shaber

The Hunt for Red October

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Review: the hunt for red october.

The Hunt for Red October is a thrilling edge-of-your-seat trifle that has admirably withstood the test of time.

Before Ben Affleck and Harrison Ford, Alec Baldwin starred as C.I.A. stud Jack Ryan in John McTiernan’s Cold War submarine thriller The Hunt for Red October . The actor’s unbridled eagerness oozes out of every pore and he turns in a credible performance as Tom Clancy’s diplomatic hero, using his clean-cut good looks and narcissistic charisma to play a man whose inexperience is no match for his swagger, fearlessness, and unflappable certitude. Unlike subsequent Ryan adventures, Red October casts Ryan as a secondary figure struggling to help the film’s genuine protagonist—Sean Connery’s renegade Russian sub captain Marko Ramius—escape the quandary he’s made for himself and his crew. The renowned naval veteran Ramius (who, in a strange twist, has a decidedly Scottish accent) has been given the keys to the Red October, the USSR’s top-secret underwater vessel that can travel undetected by sonar and is equipped with a daunting bounty of nuclear warheads. Disgusted by the thought of his motherland using the Red October in a pre-emptive strike against the United States, Ramuis and his crew steal the ship during a training run and head for the East Coast of the US, where they plan to defect. Not surprisingly, the Soviets give chase in hopes of destroying the ship before it falls into enemy hands, while the Americans plan to defend their soil against what they perceive to be a madman with nukes heading straight for their shore. In 1990, director McTiernan was at the height of his action film prowess and demonstrates here a knack for orchestrating taut set pieces, explosions, and gunfire. The film’s central fear of superpowers engaging in nuclear war, while seemingly quaint in light of today’s more insidious terrorist threats, has added resonance given recent revelations about the USSR’s Cold War designs to annihilate us. Politics aside, however, The Hunt for Red October is a thrilling edge-of-your-seat trifle that has admirably withstood the test of time.

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Tv/streaming, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, black writers week, smart people talking: the 25th anniversary of "the hunt for red october".

“The Hunt For Red October,” which came out 25 years ago this week, was the culmination of an extraordinary run by director John McTiernan , beginning with “ Predator ” and “ Die Hard ”—one very rarely matched in popular cinema. The trajectory from beginning to end is interesting as well: “Predator” seems at first glance to be serving the gods of baroque violence, being as it is an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie with all the glistening biceps and visceral spray one infers from his presence. And, while it  does deliver on that count, it is also populated by characters who feel as though they have lived full lives, animated by strong (and not just in the muscular sense) performances. Its final movement is almost a critical essay on the action film, quietly posing the question “if Arnold has to work this hard to kill the bad guy, is this not one of the definitive villains of the genre?” The film as a whole has a rich philosophical bent ripe for interrogation, coming very close to holding the alien hunter in higher moral regard than Arnold, while simultaneously being a thing equally enjoyable if only watched for violence.

McTiernan then follows with “Die Hard,” another canvas on which men paint with each other's blood, but it is one with far greater and more explicit attention paid to dramatic nuance. Its hero John McClane is vulnerable—to the point of being barefoot for nearly the entire film—and reliant almost exclusively on his wits to survive. And when he does use his skills at violence, it's not in a controlled, “cool” way. He is heard, although half-buried in the sound mix, to tell a foe “I'm gonna fuckin' cook you...and fucking eat you ” while punching him. The villain Hans Gruber, again one of the greatest the cinema has known, is played by Alan Rickman —sleek, fashionable, erudite, only undone by his inability to plan for someone as stubbornly incorruptible and impossible to intimidate as McClane.

“The Hunt For Red October," adapted by Larry Ferguson from Tom Clancy's novel, pulls even further back from overt violence, while losing none of the dramatic tension of its predecessors. In fact, the entire force of the narrative is drawn from smart people figuring stuff out. 

Both leads are men of letters: CIA analyst Jack Ryan is played by Alec Baldwin as an amiable, wildly intelligent and erudite nerd, possessed of a very relatable “do the thing while quaking in terror and talking to yourself” type of bravery. His fear of flying, PTSD-derived rather than phobic, bookends the movie. The opening flight sees him babbling nervously about turbulence to a stewardess who suggests he get some sleep. After he prevents World War III—not a spoiler, the whole point of the movie is in how he does so—he flies home sound asleep, content in the knowledge that a little turbulence is nothing compared to talking guys who really want to blow up Russians into not blowing up Russians, dangling from helicopters in the North Atlantic and chasing rogue saboteurs around nuclear submarines with guns (the latter two sequences, however brief, are nonetheless impactful experiences).

The Soviet submarine captain who sets the film's story in motion, Marko Ramius, is closer to the traditional model of the man of action. He is, after all, a naval officer. But it's significant in multiple ways that his nickname within the Soviet Navy is “The Vilnius Schoolmaster.” It indicates the fact that, as a Lithuanian, he is regarded as an Other rather than as a full-fledged Russian, a detachment that forms part of the basis for Ryan's deduction that he may be trying to defect. The phrasing of “schoolmaster” has a dual edge, one being that Ramius literally taught every submariner in the Soviet fleet everything they know, and the other being that he keeps a copy of the “Bhagavad Gita” in his cabin, cites Cortez and Columbus (although the quote attributed to Columbus was written for the film), and in a humorous revelation upon their meeting, critiques Ryan's book on fellow naval maverick William Halsey: “Your conclusions were all wrong, Ryan. Halsey acted stupidly.”

If Ryan's conclusions about Halsey were wrong, they're the only things he gets wrong in the whole movie. The way in which he reverse-engineers Ramius' plot to steal the submarine and defect is as edge-of-the-seat thrilling as any agglomeration of chase-and-battle scenes could be, to say nothing of the clarity of thought necessary to punch through the fearful, knee-jerk assumption all the Joint Chiefs of Staff make that Ramius plans to nuke the U.S. east coast. Ryan listens, a very important and oft-overlooked aspect of being a smart person, when an admiral (Fred Dalton Thompson; “The Hunt For Red October” is packed with terrific character actors) reminds him “Russians don't take a dump, son, without a plan,” leading Ryan to realize that Ramius must have already figured out how he was going to get his crew, who were not in on the defection plan, off the submarine, at which point the solution presents itself almost immediately.

Even the moment of desperation in which Ryan relies on luck to convince the American sub captain ( Scott Glenn ) on Red October's trail not to blow it out of the water, the persuasion he fabricates is ingeniously built: “Has he made any Crazy Ivans [sudden turns to sniff out pursuers]?” “What difference does that make?” “Because his next one will be to starboard.” “Why, because his last was to port?” “No, because he always goes to starboard in the bottom half of the hour.” That kind of mathematical precision in creating a piece of luck when he desperately needs it is thrilling to behold.

This leads neatly to a discussion of another crucial element of the film's thrilling intellectual derring-do, the sonar operator Jones, essayed spectacularly by Courtney B. Vance . Vance plays his first scene as though curled up by a fire with a glass of brandy and a violin concerto, taking a disarming amount of pleasure at simply playing the character. He is jolted from this reverie by the appearance and subsequent disappearance of a new, unrecorded Soviet submarine. Using his almost eerily cultivated sense of hearing (honed on classical music), Jones obsessively listens to tape and eventually detects the audio signature of Red October's nearly-silent propulsion system (the means by which it is to reach America and nuke it before anyone is the wiser), and deduces its course. The scene where Jones explains all this to his captain is utterly riveting, and delightful to behold, and the only weapons used are a good pair of headphones, a tape recorder, a nautical chart, and a magic marker. (It concludes with Vance, having incrementally increased the tension throughout the scene via line readings, eliciting what appears to be an involuntary exhalation from Glenn at the “ Eureka !” moment.)

Ramius has already composed his plot and written out the score before the movie starts, but the nature and theatricality of his on-screen thinking takes a different form. It's a marvelous bit of work on Sean Connery's part, in which he must be both actor and movie star. He uses his established persona to manifest Ramius' exalted standing within the military, and very precise acting through the most minute of gestures to keep up an exhausting balancing act for the officers and crew of the Red October. He has to constantly reassure his co-conspirators that he knows what he's doing, while dropping hints to the crew that he's crazier than he is—if announcing his plan to nuke the eastern seaboard of the U.S. didn't do the trick—subtly enough that it doesn't look deliberate.

The one scene in which he truly lets his guard down is the one where his first officer, Borodin ( Sam Neill ), describes his beautifully utopian plan to live in Montana, and drive around the country in his RV, wintering in Arizona, capped off with the joke/wistful acknowledgement of the fantastical nature of this vision, “Perhaps I will need two wives.” Ramius returns the joke (“Oh, at least!”), but when Borodin asks him what he looks forward to, Ramius can only exhale a bleak tale of battle fatigue, a realization long in the coming that a life spent at war is a life knowing only death, that his plan to defect was not so much a calculated political gesture as the product of a long life spent in the dark in which, after much careful and painful consideration, it became clear this was the only way to ever see the sun.

“The Hunt For Red October” is a marvel of pop filmmaking, one in which one of Hollywood's hottest action directors made an action movie based around thinking, and made it not only the equal to but a progression from his previous two hits (now classics). The quarter century since its release has not diminished its delights in the slightest, and it remains one of the most compulsively re-watchable movies of its, or any other, era. Not bad for a film that consists almost solely of smart people talking.

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The Hunt for Red October Review

01 Jan 1990

134 minutes

Hunt for Red October, The

Now that Soviets are so hip and lovable, and Hollywood is falling embarrassingly behind international relations, this submarine thriller may be one of the last of an endangered species: the Cold War cloak-and-dagger drama. The get-out in Hunt, though, is an intro fixing the Tom Clancy tale back in 1984, so the Muscovites can still be shifty adversaries.

Raimus’ actions send them apeshit at the Kremlin, and the entire Red Navy is sent to pursue and destroy him and the Red October. Over in D.C. the defence brains can't help but notice scads of Russian subs heading their way in some haste, and deduce it would be sensible to get their own mitts on the secret sub.

So far, so-so. One mystery kept going rather well is just what the captain really is up to. He might be nuts, he might be defecting, he might be pretending to be defecting because he really is nuts, and round it goes.

Alas, there are mighty gaffes here that sink a promising idea. The first is the failure of screenwriters, director and cast to get to grips with language. Ostensibly they opted for the conventional: Yanks play Yanks and Brits play the Russkies, mainly as nitwits. But in the opening sequences Captain Sean Connery, First Officer Sam Neill and KGB clown Peter Firth manfully tackle Russian. This sets a catastrophically hilarious tone, when long, painfully delivered lines you think must be quite profound are rendered into subtitles like "It is time". "Yes, it is time". Mercifully the Russian dissolves into English (or Scottish as the case most certainly is with you-know-who) except when the crew bursts into song.

Credulity is scuttled on terra firma as well, thanks to outrageous over-exposition. Alec Baldwin's fresh-faced CIA naval intelligence analyst Jack Ryan, for example, is allegedly so attuned to Ramius' mind he's practically psychic, predicting the Cyaptyin's every underwater move. He addresses himself in the mirror while shaving "Now, what's he going to do. . . ? What would I do. . . ?" Quick cut to him bursting into the admiral's office yelling "I know what he's going to do!"

Baldwin, while quite a dish, and Connery, while we all love him, haven't a chance of recovering the first 90 minutes from such absurdity. Finally, in the last 40 minutes, it picks up some steam and we get what we came for: air-sea stunts, underwater effects, hunters closing in on the prey, a saboteur doing his stuff, lethal weapons and a few twisteroos. The trick is to still be awake to enjoy them.

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The Star of 'The Hunt for Red October' Isn't Jack Ryan; It's Submarine Warfare

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13 Movies to Watch if You Like 'The Chosen'

The first actor to win an oscar for a non-english language performance may surprise you, every movie in peter jackson's 'the lord of the rings' trilogy, ranked.

The Hunt for Red October is the first Jack Ryan movie, which starred Alec Baldwin as Tom Clancy 's famous character. Harrison Ford took over the role for two sequels, Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger , before it moved to Ben Affleck for The Sum of All Fears . Paramount then attempted a reboot with Chris Pine and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit before moving the character to television with the Amazon series Jack Ryan starring John Krasinski . This is all pretty surprising when you consider that Jack Ryan is a pretty dull, uninteresting character who consciously avoids being in the middle of the action. Only Hunt for Red October seems to really understand that because the star of the film isn't Ryan or even Sean Connery 's submarine captain Marko Ramius. It's the art of submarine warfare.

For those who haven't seen John McTiernan 's classic thriller, which turns 30 this year and is available on 4K starting today, the plot concerns Ramius and his submarine, the Red October. The Red October has a new propulsion system that allows it to run virtually silent, which is deeply concerning for Americans since the submarine could drive right up to the US coast and fire nuclear missiles. However, Ramius' plan isn't to attack, but to defect, and CIA analyst Ryan has figured it out. The plot is about how everyone can try to maneuver around Cold War tensions so that Ramius can defect without setting off World War III.

On the one hand, Hunt for Red October is probably the best depiction of Ryan since it understands him in the John McClane mold of everyman who doesn't want to be a hero. Ryan doesn't set out to be in the middle of the action; he intends to just relay information, but his superiors put him in the fray until he decides that he must participate to save the world from a nuclear crisis. The problem with the other Jack Ryan adaptations is that they either fail to give him a proper counterbalance (Sean Miller in Patriot Games is no Marko Ramius), have him overshadowed by a more interesting, active character like John Clark, or lean away from the analyst bit to make him more generic military-style hero.

The Hunt for Red October is able to take the strain off the thin Ryan character by giving equal weight to not only Ramius, but the whole ensemble. Red October has a deep bench with Sam Neill , Scott Glenn , Courtney B. Vance , Tim Curry , Fred Thompson , and James Earl Jones all giving great supporting performances. You feel the full weight of the conflict rather than Ryan trying to carry it all on his shoulders. Furthermore, with this many players, it lends more credence to the stakes. This rich cast of characters is able to bring their own skills to the table so that while Ryan may be the guy who connects the dots, you still need Vance's radio tech to discover the Red October or Glenn's sure-handed captaining when torpedoes have been fired.

Of course, studio franchises being they are, Paramount was always going to seize on the Ryan character because that's where the source material is. There's a whole "Ryanverse" that can be mined for material, and it is still is. In addition to the Jack Ryan TV series, later this year we'll get Michael B. Jordan in John Clark's origin story, Without Remorse . But when you look at The Hunt for Red October , you don't think, "Ah, I need more movies with this Ryan character." You think, "We need more submarine movies like this that feel realistic while sacrificing none of the action-thriller plot beats of the modern blockbuster."

Sadly, that magical formula is a lot harder to emulate, and that's a shame. The submarine movie remains a rare beast, and to be fair, it's tough to do it better than what McTiernan accomplished with his 1990 movie. Watching the new 4K, which looks terrific and really shows off Jan de Bont 's impressive cinematography, you see that the director, who was coming off Predator and Die Hard , is still at the top of his game by never losing the geography of the submarine standoffs. Dennis Virkler and John Wright 's editing deserves special attention for how they move between so many settings—US submarines, Russian submarines, command centers, etc.—while avoiding confusion. If you ever wanted to get someone into submarine movies, The Hunt for Red October is pretty strong place to start.

While the Jack Ryan character has a long and industrious career that doesn't seem likely to end any time soon (a third season of the Amazon series is already on the way), the legacy of The Hunt for Red October shows that the film's strongest asset isn't the wily analyst but the specific adventure he goes on in his debut picture. Maybe if Amazon is feeling bold they'll stick John Krasinski in a metal tube underwater and go from there.

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The Hunt For Red October – Book and Movie Review

The Hunt For Red October , written by Tom Clancy and published in 1984, was a huge commercial and critical success. Critics often mention it as one of the best spy novels of all time. The novel was also the basis for a successful movie starring Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin.

The Hunt For Red October: Title

The title uses a classic title archetype, the Prize, the Soviets and Americans both want to possess the submarine Red October and its revolutionary new stealth drive.

(For more on titles, see How to Choose a Title For Your Novel )

The Hunt For Red October: Logline

When a revolutionary new soviet submarine tries to defect to the USA, the Russians chase it across the Atlantic with everything they have. A CIA analyst who suspects the submarine captain’s true motives has to come up with a plan to guide the rogue submarine to safety.

(For more on loglines, see The Killogator Logline Formula )

The Hunt For Red October: Plot Summary

Warning: My plot summaries contain spoilers The major spoilers are blacked out like this [blackout]secret[/blackout]. To view them, just select/highlight them.

It’s 1984. After the death of his wife, Marko Ramius, one of the Soviet Navy’s best submarine captains, decides to defect to the United States in a revolutionary stealth submarine,  Red October. The submarine’s officers are in on the plan but the crew are told they are carrying out a wargame where the Soviet Navy will attempt to locate them.

When the Soviet Navy’s leaders receive a letter from Ramius telling them he’s defecting, they immediately send the entire Soviet Northern Fleet to sea with orders to sink the Red October at all costs.

The sudden sortie of the Northern Fleet unnerves the US Navy, which starts making preparations for war. Meanwhile, Jack Ryan, a CIA analyst, learns of Ramius’s letter and the sortie of the Northern Fleet. Ryan guesses Ramius is planning to defect and convinces the CIA that the revolutionary submarine is a prize worth risking a lot for. The CIA assigns him to help Ramius escape.

Escape Plan

Ryan gets in contact with Ramius and they arrange a fake reactor meltdown in the Red October forcing the enlisted crew to abandon ship. When the crew evacuate the submarine, Ramius and the other officers stay behind, claiming they are going to scuttle the Red October so  it doesn’t fall into American hands. Ryan arranges for an obsolete US submarine, to be blown up at the location to add to the deception.

Ryan boards the  Red October  and meets Ramius. They realise that there is a KGB agent on the submarine. The KGB agent wounds Ramius and tries to sink  Red October by igniting a missile inside her, but Ryan kills him before he can complete his plan.

A final [blackout]Soviet attack submarine discovers the  Red October,  realises the deception and attacks. The attack submarine damages the Red October but the Red October finally rams it and it sinks.[/blackout]

With the last [blackout]Soviet submarine sunk, the Americans escort Ramius and the  Red October to safely in the USA. The crew return to the Soviet Union reporting that the submarine sank. [/blackout]

(For more on summarising stories, see How to Write a Novel Synopsis )

The Hunt For Red October: Analysis

The Hunt For Red October has dual protagonists – Jack Ryan and Marko Ramius. This gives it a relatively unusual Hybrid plot (see spy novel plots ).

Ramius is On The Run (in particular the sub-type of the On The Run plot called a Straight Run) – trying to defect with his submarine.

The ‘Straight Run’ Plot The Protagonist: Is involved in an Inciting Incident with a group of Antagonists. Realises they are not safe from the Antagonists. Is also not safe from the authorities, as they are tricked or controlled by the Antagonists. Goes on the run, pursued by both the Antagonists and the authorities. Involves one or more Allies in their escape (Optionally, there is a romance sub-plot with one of the Allies). Narrowly avoids capture and death (or is captured and escapes) by both the Antagonists and the authorities. Persuades the authorities they should work together to stop the Antagonists. Confronts the Antagonists and stops (or fails to stop) them.

Ryan has a Mission – to try to help Ramius defect.

The ‘Mission’ Plot The Protagonist: Is given a mission to carry out by their Mentor. Will be opposed by the Antagonist as they try to complete the mission. Makes a plan to complete the Mission. Trains and gathers resources for the Mission. Involves one or more Allies in their Mission (Optionally, there is a romance sub-plot with one of the Allies). Attempts to carry out the Mission, dealing with further Allies and Enemies as they meet them. Is betrayed by an Ally or the Mentor (optionally). Narrowly avoids capture by the Antagonist (or is captured and escapes). Has a final confrontation with the Antagonist and completes (or fails to complete) the Mission.

The two protagonists come together towards the end of the novel in a last confrontation with the antagonists (the Soviets).

Like Alistair Maclean, Tom Clancy is not an author for whom character study is important. With the focus on technology and the details of warfare, Clancy makes use of a large cast of faceless naval officers doing their jobs. All the American and British characters are pretty generic ‘good guys’ who work together with little conflict. In some ways this is realistic—real military operations do include many people working together relatively smoothly.

Of the two main characters, Ramius is the one who is somewhat interesting. Ryan himself is an old-fashioned nice guy hero, with very little depth and no characterisation other than being quick-witted and straight-talking. The loss of his wife and a growing hatred of the Soviet system motivates Ramius though. He also murders the Red October’s  political officer, who is just doing his job, which shows a ruthless streak.

Technothriller

The Hunt for Red October popularised the technothriller genre. Though books like Firefox had a similar focus on sophisticated technology, Clancy presented facts in such minute detail in  The Hunt for Red October  that critics described it as “containing as much technical information about submarines and undersea warfare as a Naval Academy textbook.”

But even the author of a technothriller must use artistic licence, if only because many details are secret. Clancy’s technique in this case, which he called ‘joining the dots’, involved extrapolating from publicly available sources of information. This lead to his being contacted by the FBI, who believed he must have received classified information, causing Clancy some amusement. He stated, in a New York Times interview that: “I’ve made up stuff that’s turned out to be real, that’s the spooky part”.

Reality: Soviet Naval Defections Tom Clancy very loosely based The Hunt For Red October on two real-life incidents. The first was a Soviet submarine tender captain who sailed his barge to Sweden and defected, possibly with some help from the CIA. The second was a 1975 mutiny aboard the Soviet frigate  Storozhevoy , whose political officer seized control of the ship and tried to sail to Leningrad, and launch a new revolution. The Soviet Navy hunted the Storozhevoy down and recaptured it. They shot the mutiny’s ring leader and sent his second in command to prison for eight years.

The Hunt For Red October: My Verdict

The archetypal technothriller. A must read.

The Hunt For Red October: The Movie

The Hunt For Red October  was filmed in 1990. The movie starred Sean Connery as Ramius and Alec Baldwin as Ryan. The movie, which follows the plot of the novel faithfully, with a few exceptions, is pretty good, but nowhere near as good as the novel. Sean Connery makes a good Ramius though and a couple of the scenes, such as the Red October’s crew singing the Soviet national anthem , are great.

The Hunt For Red October: The Game

Games companies released three video games based on The Hunt For Red October in the eighties and nineties, but they’re obsolete now.

More interesting is the board game, which is really a naval wargame with the Soviet Navy fighting against the US Navy and its NATO allies.

The board is a map of the North Atlantic and Arctic, and there are eight scenarios, the hunt for the Red October itself , and various WW3 scenarios, such as escorting a convoy from the USA to Europe. It’s a fun game with relatively simple rules, so if you like board wargames with lots of counters and dice rolling you’ll probably enjoy it. It’s easy enough to find on eBay if you want to get hold of it. There’s also a companion game based on Clancy’s speculative war novel  Red Storm Rising, and if you want to play the whole of an imaginary 1980s WW3, you can combine the two games.

The ‘Ryanverse’: Sequels to The Hunt For Red October

So far there have been over a dozen novels featuring Jack Ryan, mostly sequels, but also some prequels. Jack Ryan rises to Deputy Director of the CIA, joins the government as National Security Advisor, becomes Vice President and eventually becomes President of the USA. As Ryan moves into politics, the novels become a vehicle for Clancy’s paleoconservative political views, and the quality drops precipitously. I don’t feel I can recommend them.

However, ‘Tom Clancy’ remains very popular. His name has become a brand used on many inferior technothriller novels, not actually written by Clancy. Clancy himself died in 2013, but novels and games with his name on continue to be published.

Want to Read or Watch It?

Here’s the trailer:

The Hunt For Red October  novel is available on Amazon US  here  and Amazon UK here .

The Hunt For Red October  movie is available on Amazon US  here  and Amazon UK  here .

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Hunt for Red October, The (United States, 1990)

The Hunt for Red October has a much different feel from any of the other Jack Ryan films (to date, there have been five plus a web series). Part of this is because, with a seasoned veteran like Sean Connery posed opposite a lesser-known actor (Alec Baldwin), concessions had to be made to enhance Connery’s scenes. Also, John McTiernan’s directorial style is substantially different than those of his successors. McTiernan is a master of escalating tension, although The Hunt for Red October doesn’t show it as well as Die Hard . The movie personalizes the global crisis sufficiently for the audience to have a deeper rooting interest than in whether or not World War III breaks out.

Post-World War II, there have been many movies about submarine warfare. The most successful of these, Wolfgang Petersen’s Das Boot , is an exhausting, white-knuckle affair that set the gold standard for undersea battles. Although there is some sub-to-sub combat in The Hunt for Red October , it’s treated as one of many plot elements and McTiernan doesn’t take the time or effort to set things up the way Petersen did. There’s no sense of claustrophobia and the dangers of suffocation, drowning, or being crushed are minimized. That’s because in every other submarine movie, the fate of the boat is central to the story. In The Hunt for Red October , it’s a secondary concern. This isn’t really a submarine movie; it’s a movie about late-era Cold War political maneuvering.

The story, which is set in 1984 to allow events to transpire before the collapse of the Soviet Union, postulates that the USSR has developed a prototype Typhoon class sub fitted with a new drive that allows it to run silently, making it virtually undetectable and, as such, an obvious first strike weapon. The boat, named Red October , is commanded by respected submarine captain Marko Ramius on its maiden voyage. Unbeknownst to his superiors, Ramius plans to defect and most of the officers on board are co-conspirators. While at sea, Ramius kills the Red October ’s political officer, Ivan Putin (Peter Firth), before engaging the caterpillar drive and causing the sub to “disappear.”

The Hunt for Red October features an A-list (male) cast. The unquestioned “draw” was Connery, who had settled nicely into his post-007 life. Just three years beyond wining an Oscar for The Untouchables , Connery had starred in both Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and The Presidio and had not yet entered the slide that would lead to his quitting the industry in disgust. Even though The Hunt for Red October is now recognized as the first of the “Jack Ryan series,” it is very much Connery’s film. This is especially true because Alec Baldwin, the wet-around-the-ears actor chosen to play Ryan, is neither charismatic nor convincing. Baldwin shows none of the intensity that would define his star-making performances in such films as Prelude to a Kiss and Glengarry Glen Ross . The supporting cast is comprised of veteran characters actors Scott Glenn, Sam Neill (as Ramius’ confidante and second-in-command), James Earl Jones, Richard Jordan (as the American National Security Advisor), Joss Ackland (as a top Soviet diplomat), Tim Curry (as the Red October ’s doctor), Courtney B. Vance (as the Dallas ’ sonar operator), and Stellan Skarsgard (as Captain Tupolev, the commander of another Soviet sub).

Although The Hunt for Red October wasn’t Sean Connery’s final film (he would go on to make more than a dozen other movies before retiring in 2003), it could be considered his last great role (some would argue that was in Finding Forrester ; others might suggest The Rock ). To an extent, The Hunt for Red October was a victim of unfortunate timing. During its initial box office run, the collapse of the Soviet Union robbed it of a sense of immediacy. Nevertheless, the mix of traditional thriller elements, Cold War storytelling, and submarine warfare generate sufficient tension to engage the viewer throughout. Coupled with Connery’s magnetic performance, that’s enough to make The Hunt for Red October as watchable today as it was during its 1990 release.

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The Hunt for Red October

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

This just in: some audience members at the film version of Tom Clancy’s best-selling submarine saga The Hunt for Red October have been spotted listing in their seats, their eyes dull and glazed. The experts are confounded. The movie boasts a major star ( Sean Connery ), a stalwart young contender ( Alec Baldwin ) and the best production $50 million can buy. And John McTiernan, the anything-for-a-jolt director of Die Hard, is at the helm. So how does a book that has readers checking their pulses become a movie that has audiences checking their watches? Thereby hangs a tale.

As right-wing, redbaiting, kick-ass techno-thrillers go, you can’t do better than Clancy’s Hunt. Set on a 30,000-ton Soviet Typhoon submarine whose renegade captain is barreling west either to defect or to nuke the U.S. imperialists, the book is crammed with facts. The sub, called the Red October after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, carries twenty-six SS-N-20 Seahawk missiles, each with eight 500-kiloton multiple independently target-able reentry vehicles (MIRVs) — enough to destroy 200 cities. And its silent propulsion system makes detection almost impossible.

That kind of detail caused a sensation when the book, which has sold 6 million copies, was published in 1984. “Who declassified this thing?” said the former navy secretary John Lehman. Nobody, as it turned out. Clancy, now forty-three, never served in the military; myopia washed him out of the ROTC at Maryland’s Loyola College. He wrote Hunt, his first novel, to escape from selling insurance and improve life for his wife and kids. A gadget freak and an avid reader of military history, Clancy interviewed submariners and drew on public records.

President Reagan, a fan of authors who know an evil empire when they see one, called Hunt “the perfect yarn.” Adding four more hot books to his résumé ( Red Storm Rising, Patriot Games , The Cardinal of the Kremlin and Clear and Present Danger ), each with enough flag-waving to shame George M. Cohan, Clancy became a millionaire and the confidant of grateful policy makers who allegedly slip him classified information. “They’re not just novels,” said Dan Quayle of Clancy’s books. “They’re read as the real thing.” With apologies to the VP, most people read Clancy’s books as potboilers. The hardware sounds authentic, but Clancy’s vision of simon-pure American heroes fighting the sneaky red devils occupies the same simplistic realm as John Wayne Westerns and James Bond capers.

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In the film, oddly enough, McTiernan plays against the fantasy and fun. At two hours and fifteen minutes, Hunt has a stately pace more befitting a meditative spy novel by John Le Carré than a rip-snorter by Clancy.

It helps that Sean Connery, as Marko Ramius, the gray-whiskered captain of the Red October, is in vigorous star form. At first he speaks in Russian. Nice touch, until McTiernan fades to English and Connery’s Scottish burr hits the ear like a torpedo. Irish Sam Neill ( A Cry in the Dark ) plays Borodin, Ramius’s executive officer, with a Russian accent, and British Tim Curry ( Legend ) plays Petrov, the sub’s doctor, with a British accent. The Tower of Babel effect is maddening.

The confusion lingers. Clancy isn’t much at characterization, but he’s a whiz compared with screenwriters Larry Ferguson ( The Presidio ) and Donald Stewart ( Missing ). At least Clancy sketched in Ramius’s motives for revenge on his motherland: His father was a murderous party tool; his wife the tragic victim of Soviet medical incompetence. For background, the film’s writers have Ramius mutter, “I miss the peace of fishing.” And Borodin, one of the officers Ramius selected for their shared hatred of the Soviet Union, tells Ramius he wants to defect so that he can settle in Montana and drive “a recreational vehicle.” The dialogue sounds like something left over from the last Star Trek opus, and it stops the picture cold.

Baldwin, as CIA analyst Jack Ryan, has it worse. Ryan is a bookish ex-marine with a fear of flying, but Clancy emphasized his fierce independence. Married to a wealthy woman, Ryan — in Clancy’s words — “could not be bought, bribed or bullied.” Ryan is a major figure in four of Clancy’s novels. But the Hunt screenplay paints him in lightweight terms as the all-purpose hero. Ryan will interrupt his talks with the CIA director, overblustered by James Earl Jones, to shop for a toy bear for his daughter. He will also have himself dropped from a chopper into freezing waters so that he can swim toward a moving submarine. The scene is visually exciting, but unless you read Clancy, you’ll never guess what drives Ryan to risk his life. Baldwin, a quirky, instinctive actor, gamely fights to fill in the blanks, but the role’s blandness is suffocating.

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Things pick up when the Red October is overtaken by the USS Dallas — a seaman named Jonesie, played by Courtney B. Vance, has discovered how to track the sub. Ryan and the Dallas’ s skipper, Bart Mancuso (Scott Glenn), join Ramius on the Red October just as a Soviet sub, commanded by Tupolev (Stellan Skarsgard), a former student of Ramius’s, is gaining on them. There’s also a saboteur on board to ensure that the miracle sub never falls into American hands. The payoff is electrifying, but McTiernan has wired it with an unconscionably long fuse.

Though Hunt shows fitful signs of life, it lacks the human drama of Das Boot, the technical dazzle of The Abyss and the old-fashioned brio of Run Silent, Run Deep. Even more unsettling, a disclaimer at the start of the film reminds us that the story took place before Gorbachev. Fair enough. But whatever the historical perspective, we’re still watching a better-dead-than-red movie in the era of glasnost and perestroika. Like Top Gun before it, Hunt is tub thumping for a strong defense capability. If the plodding exposition doesn’t get you first, the propaganda will. The only sensible reaction can be summed up in one word: Mayday.

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The Hunt for Red October Reviews

• 58   Metascore
• 2 hr 15 mins
• Drama, Suspense, Action & Adventure
• Watchlist Where to Watch

Tom Clancy's thriller about a Soviet commander heading for the US coast in a missile-laden submarine.

In spite of the high level of talent on board and at the helm, THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER is a heavy-duty mediocrity, sluggish, unwieldy, and instantly forgettable. The plot revolves around Marko Ramius (Sean Connery), a veteran Soviet sub commander who is guiding the new, super-advanced Red October submarine on its maiden mission. Abruptly, Ramius murders the onboard political officer and burns his orders. Red October is supposed to participate in war games meant to showcase its ability to evade sonar detection and deliver a full load of nuclear missiles to major American targets. Ramius instead tells his crew that they will approach the US coastline to embarrass the American military. In fact, he has something very different in mind. When Ramius goes off course, factions within the US military and government suspect a sneak attack. Guided by CIA analyst Dr. Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin), who happens to be an expert on Ramius, the American security brain trust has to decide whether the Russians are telling the truth. Then they must choose the appropriate response--either help the Russians sink Red October (the FAIL SAFE scenario) or help Ramius defect. Tom Clancy's exciting (albeit instantly dated) Cold War bestseller served as the basis for the film. But on the screen, RED OCTOBER suffers from a bad case of bloated scenario, lacking unities of place and action. In simpler terms, it should have stayed put, either above the surface or in the briny depths. Instead, the two major plots--two different movies, really--wind up neutralizing each other. Each time McTiernan cuts from one setting to the other, he's forced to start from scratch in rebuilding tension and involvement. Moreover, Larry Ferguson's adaptation doesn't bother to supply motivation for its stock, square-jawed characters. Ryan is so short of substance viewers may find it hard to remember that he's the movie's hero. While James Earl Jones reprised his role in subsequent Clancy-based pictures (PATRIOT GAMES, CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER), notoriously obstreperous Baldwin lost the Ryan role to Harrison Ford after a contract dispute.

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The hunt for red october: 10 differences between the movie and book.

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Tom Clancy is one of the most successful thriller writers of all time and his novels have inspired many movies and television shows over the years. But the first and perhaps best of them all is The Hunt for Red October .

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The movie stars Sean Connery as a Russian submarine captain who goes rogue and Alec Baldwin as CIA analyst Jack Ryan who thinks the captain means to defect to America. The novel kickstarted Clancy's Jack Ryan franchise and the movie is regarded as a faithful and effective adaptation. However, there are some interesting differences between the two versions.

Sped-Up Timeline

The most common dilemma faced by adapting a novel into a movie is condensing a story of hundreds of pages in length into a reasonable movie runtime. In many cases, the movie can lose a lot of the nuance of the source material.

In the case of The Hunt for Red October , the sped-up pace actually helps to make it a more entertaining story. The movie trims a lot of the fat of the book without losing too much. For instance, Jack's briefing of the Red October to Greer is changed from multiple chapters spanning several days to a single conversation.

Is Ramius A Villain?

In the opening chapter of the novel, Captain Ramius sets sail with his state-of-the-art submarine. Through his internal monologue, it is made immediately clear that he is no longer loyal to the Soviet Union and plans to defect to America. Jack Ryan figures this out very early on as well.

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In the movie, a lot of the tension comes from the fact that it is unclear if Ramius is a villain at first. It initially appears as though he might be trying to start a nuclear war. This makes Jack's eureka moment all the more thrilling.

Skepticism Of Ramius

In both versions of the story, Captain Ramius is a respected and powerful leader. However, he encounters a lot more trepidation from his crew in the movie than he does in the book. In the movie, the submarine's doctor, Petrov, questions Ramius' decision-making several times as it conflicts with standard procedure. Even more severe, one of his officers begins openly accusing him of losing his mental faculties.

In the book, such questions of Ramius' command do not exist. The crew sees him as a fearless and flawless leader whom they follow without hesitation.

While Jack Ryan is certainly the main hero in the book, there is a secondary hero who makes a strong impression as well. Skip Tyler is a former submarine commander who lost his position after a car accident took one of his legs.

Despite just being a teacher now, Jack trusts him to look over the photos of the Red October and give his assessment. He is the one who comes up with much of the plan for getting the crew and the submarine to America. In the movie, he only appears in a couple of scenes with Jack getting most of the spotlight.

Submarine Disaster

When the Russians learn of Ramius' plan to hand the new submarine over to the Americans, the entire fleet is sent out after him. In the movie, this results in one scene of a bomber attempting to destroy the Red October.

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There is a much more substantial scene in the novel when one of the pursuing vessels runs its engines too hot trying to catch up to Ramius. This results in a meltdown that leaves the whole crew dead save one survivor. It is an exciting sequence but expendable for the movie.

The Motivation Of Ramius

In that first chapter of the book that reveals Ramius' plans to defect to the United States, it is hinted that this is because of the death of his wife. It is later revealed that his wife died at the hands of a drunken surgeon who was not punished because of his political connections.

While this personal reasoning might seem important for making Ramius sympathetic, the movie's motivations for the character are much simpler yet still effective. He recognizes that the Red October is designed to start a nuclear war and is committed to getting it out of Russian hands.

The Russian Mole

The movie does a very good job of determining which storylines add to the main plot and which can be let go. The book introduces a small storyline very late in the book with none of it appearing in the movie at all.

The storyline revolves around a senator's aide who is revealed to be a mole for the Russians. He is arrested and turned so that the Americans will start feeding him false information to communicate to the Russians.

Tension Between Countries

The Cold War story makes for a great structure of a political thriller that delves into the tensions between the United States and Russia. These tensions are surface level in the movie and eventually, the Russians lie to the Americans, saying Ramius is planning to launch his missiles in hopes the Americans will destroy him.

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In the book, the Russians attempt to hide the issue with Ramius from the Americans until the bitter end. However, the tensions between the countries lead to several close calls between the military on several occasions, which cements what is at stake for Ryan's mission.

Sympathetic Borodin

One of the standout characters from the movie is Borodin (Sam Neill) , Ramius' second-in-command. He is the most loyal follower of Ramius and during one touching scene, the two men discuss what they think their lives will be like in America with Borodin stating he wants to live in Montana. This sets up his heartbreaking death when he is shot by a spy and his dying words are, "I would have liked to see Montana."

Not only is Borodin a much less important character in the novel, but he is also not nearly as sympathetic. While Ramius is thinking about his officers and how were mistreated by the Soviet government, it is revealed that Borodin's grievance is that he accused a colleague of being a gay but nothing was done about it.

Showdown With Tupolev

The climactic action sequence in both versions of the story comes when the Red October is found by another Russian sub, making for an intense naval battle . The enemy sub is commanded by one of Ramius's former students, Tupolev.

In the movie, Tupolev is a cold villain whose arrogance causes him to be lured into a trap and blown up with his own torpedo. In the novel, Tupolev is torn between his duty and having to kill Ramius. His sub is destroyed when Ramius rams it with the Red October.

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• The Hunt for Red October (1990)