Movie Reviews

The Hunt for Red October puts a bit of a twist onto what is otherwise a fairly standard submarine movie. The film's "bad guys" aren't really the focus of the story. The focus is on the crew (and particularly the captain, played by Sean Connery) of a top-secret experimental Russian submarine -- named the Red October -- that is equipped with a new type of engine that allows it to travel virtually undected by any sonar device. American satalites capture pictures of this sub leaving its dock one day in 1984, and under the impression that the Red October's captain is intent on launching a missile against the U.S., the Americans send one of its own subs out to try and locate the stealth ship.

The twist though, is that Capt. Marko Ramius (Connery) in fact wishes to defect from the Soviet Union and seek refuge in the United States. Ramius can't communicate his intentions to the Americans for fear that breaking radio silence will alert the Russians to his whereabouts and cause them to do whatever it takes to keep their submarine from falling into the hands of the Americans (meaning they'll blow it up themselves if they can find it first). So the "bad guys" I mentioned above aren't really bad guys at all -- though the Russian submarine fleet does make a threatening appearance near the end of the film.

The Hunt for Red October has some pretty good scenes in it, like when the two main submarines come very close to ramming into each other simply because the Red October's stealthy-engine-thingy means the Americans can't tell exactly where the sub is. Sean Connery gives a pretty decent performance as the Russian Captain. Alec Baldwin does a passable job as Jack Ryan, a CIA 'technical advisor' who is the first to believe that Ramius intends to defect (and who appears in a number of other based-on-a-Tom-Clancey-novel movies, and who is played significantly better by Harrison Ford).

Anyway, this is a decent movie, but nothing too spectacular.