Saturday, April 29, 2017

Patriot Games (1992)

Director: Phillip Noyce

Writers: Tom Clancy, W. Peter Iliff, Donald Stewart

Composer: James Horner

Starring: Harrison Ford, Anne Archer, Patrick Bergin, Sean Bean, Thora Birch, James Fox, Samuel L. Jackson, Polly Walker, J.E. Freeman, James Earl Jones, Richard Harris, Ted Raimi

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Let the Games Begin.

Plot: When CIA Analyst Jack Ryan interferes with an IRA assassination, a renegade faction targets him and his family for revenge.



My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Nah.  3 times in 25 years is plenty.

I loves me some Harrison Ford from this point in his career.  He was a solid action/thriller actor.  He's great in this as you'd expect.  The cast is great and they're all solid, too.  Horner's score, though typically reminiscent of his earlier work, is very good.  The first two thirds of the film is very good.  You've got several nicely done action scenes and some good tension building but then that last half hour shits the bed.  It's all set at Jack Ryan's house on the coastline of Maryland or someplace which is where he, his family and a whole mess of military protection are waiting it out to see if the bad guys show up to kill some mofos.  Of all the friggin' places to place people to protect them.  Unbelievable.  For the last half hour it's typical, predictable Hollywood.  It's well done, technically, but it's almost thirty minutes of BS because you know Jack and his family aren't going to snuff it just because that's how things roll in Hollywood.  It just bothers me that everyone involved did such a fine job building the tensions for nearly an hour and a half to let the story of all things tear it all down and leave you with a lack of fulfillment.  The final moment before the end credits rolled was very cute, though.  The Paramount DVD features the film in anamorphic widescreen.  You get two extras, a 25 minute making of (anamorphic widescreen) and the theatrical trailer (non anamorphic widescreen).

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