John McTiernan’s submarine thriller is tense, patient and worth the attention it asks for. Sean Connery leads a fine cast through the tactical puzzles, with some overlong explanations and thinly written characters getting in the way.
The Hunt for Red October is an excellent submarine thriller, confident enough to let its men think before they act. The Cold War makes a wrong answer potentially catastrophic, and John McTiernan gets considerable suspense from the effort to avoid one. The explanations run long in places, but at 135 minutes it rarely feels as though it is killing time. Its patience gives us a chance to weigh the choices along with the people making them.
Larry Ferguson and Donald E. Stewart, adapting Tom Clancy’s novel, have a useful central problem: how much can anyone safely infer from the behaviour of Marko Ramius? Sean Connery plays the Soviet captain with enough authority to make that question worth pursuing. Alec Baldwin’s Jack Ryan has to hold our attention alongside him, and Baldwin is good at making thought seem like work. He gives an underwritten part an alertness that keeps the discussions from becoming a succession of men reciting information.
Connery is the main reason to settle in. He makes command seem habitual: the authority is there before he has finished speaking, so the film need not keep demonstrating it. Scott Glenn gives Bart Mancuso a useful firmness, while Sam Neill makes Vasily Borodin’s warmth seem unforced. We were properly tense during the discussions of how to respond to Ramius, because Baldwin makes the act of thinking through an answer look urgent.
Jan de Bont’s cinematography keeps attention on faces amid the equipment, so we can watch the men assessing what they hear. Terence Marsh’s production design makes that machinery feel like familiar working equipment, which helps us accept the crew’s confidence around it. John Wright and Dennis Virkler cut between the conversations without breaking the patient rhythm, allowing a decision in one place to put pressure on the next. We can stay with the problem instead of continually trying to reorient ourselves.
Basil Poledouris’s score lends the proceedings a gravity that generally feels earned, and helps sustain the sense that something larger than one vessel is at stake. The writing is less secure when it asks us to care about the men beyond their immediate duties. Ferguson and Stewart can be blunt about supplying a personal detail, as though a pause in the tactical discussion automatically amounts to a glimpse of a life. The cast does what it can, but some of those passages feel dutiful.
The other reservation is the quantity of explanation. McTiernan usually finds a reason for us to listen, but there are exchanges whose dramatic purpose is exhausted before the talking stops. A firmer cut to those passages would have helped, especially when another explanation delays a choice we already understand. These are local irritations, though, and the film generally handles its complicated business with a clarity that makes the next decision worth waiting for.
Within the submarine thriller, restricted movement ought to be an advantage, and McTiernan treats it as one. He can build suspense from uncertainty about another man’s judgement without immediately sending everyone into motion. Those expecting a succession of chases may find the pace forbidding. Give it an evening when nobody is likely to talk over the quiet parts.
