Patriot Games (film)

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Patriot Games
Patriot Games theatrical poster.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed byPhillip Noyce
Screenplay by
Based onPatriot Games
by Tom Clancy
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyDonald McAlpine
Edited by
Music byJames Horner
Production
companies
Distributed byParamount Pictures
Release date
  • June 5, 1992 (1992-06-05) (United States)
Running time
117 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$45 million[2]
Box office$178 million[3]

Patriot Games is a 1992 American action thriller film directed by Phillip Noyce and based on Tom Clancy's 1987 novel of the same name. The film is a sequel to the 1990 film The Hunt for Red October, but with different actors in the leading roles, Harrison Ford starring as Jack Ryan and Anne Archer as his wife. James Earl Jones reprises his role as Admiral James Greer. The cast also includes Sean Bean, Patrick Bergin, Thora Birch, Samuel L. Jackson, James Fox, and Richard Harris.

The film premiered in theaters in the United States on June 5, 1992, and spent two weeks as the No. 1 film, grossing $178,051,587 worldwide at the box office. The following film in the series, Clear and Present Danger (1994), also starred Ford and Archer.

Plot[]

Whilst on vacation with his family in London, retired CIA analyst Jack Ryan witnesses an assassination attempt on Lord William Holmes, the British Minister of State for Northern Ireland. Jack intervenes, killing two gunmen and assisting in the arrest of a third. The surviving gunmen is identified as Sean Miller, a member of a splinter group of the IRA and whose younger brother was one of the other assassins Jack killed.

Sean is convicted for his crimes, but en-route to Albany Prison on the Isle of Wight, Sean's prison convoy is ambushed by his comrades. Fleeing to North Africa, the group plan their next attempt on Lord Holmes, though Sean is adamant at claiming his revenge against Jack. SO13 Sergeant Owens also deduces that due to the complexities regarding Sean's transfer that there must have been an informant.

Returning home to America, Jack narrowly survives an assassination attempt by Sean's associates, however, his wife and daughter are deliberately crashed on a highway by Sean; his daughter sustaining injuries so severe that her spleen has to be removed. Furious, Jack returns to the CIA to bring Sean to justice, approaching Sinn Fein representative Paddy O'Neil for information. Though Paddy refuses to sell out his fellow Irishmen, Jack threatens to destroy his fundraising campaign by showing the media images of his daughter. Paddy ultimately helps Jack by revealing the red-haired woman he saw at both Lord Holmes' and his own assassination attempts is in fact English; if Jack finds her, he will find Sean. Further analysis by Jack concludes that Sean is in hiding at a training camp in Libya. The Special Air Service are deployed to raid the camp, killing everybody there. Jack, however, is not aware that Sean and his comrades had already fled to North America to coincide with a visit by Lord Holmes to Jack's home to present his KCVO medal.

At the Ryan residence, a thunderstorm supposedly knocks out the power to the home. Jack, however, being on the phone at the time, recognizes the power outage as deliberate. Jack moves Lord Holmes to safety, also discovering his assistant Watkins is the informant. Sean's team also kills the DSS agents and state troopers guarding the residency and move into the house, before giving pursuit to Jack on a boat. When Sean's comrades realize Jack is alone, they demand that Sean turn back. However, he kills them, and boards Ryan's boat. During a fight with Ryan, Jack impales Sean on the anchor, killing him. An FBI Hostage Rescue Team soon arrives afterwards, rescuing Jack, his family and Lord Holmes.

Cast[]

Production[]

Development and casting[]

Viacom tried to option the rights for an ABC television adaptation of Patriot Games after the release of the novel in 1987. However, Tom Clancy got into a legal dispute over whether he had retained the character in his deal for the U.S. Naval Institute to publish the previous novel in the series The Hunt for Red October.[4] In 1988, during the pre-production of the film adaptation of The Hunt for Red October, Paramount Pictures issued another lawsuit claiming that it had purchased the rights to the character of Jack Ryan with its $455,000 contract to adapt The Hunt for Red October and that the ABC adaptation could not move forward. Although Tom Clancy’s attorney Robert Yodelman disputed Paramount’s claim to full character rights, the lawsuit led to the project’s cancellation.[5]

The actors who played Jack and Caroline Ryan in The Hunt for Red October, Alec Baldwin and Gates McFadden, did not appear in the film. Baldwin was in negotiations to reprise his role, but committed to perform in A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway after filming on Patriot Games was delayed by two months.[6][7] In 2011, Baldwin claimed the role was recast due to David Kirkpatrick forcing him to choose between performing in A Streetcar Named Desire or agreeing to an open-ended clause relating to dates for the first sequel.[8] Baldwin further claimed this occurred after a famous actor, widely believed to be the film's eventual star Harrison Ford, offered to play Ryan. Ford was favored by both the studio and the director John McTiernan due to a large debt the studio owed to him from Harold Becker's unproduced historical film Night Ride Down, a film about the Pullman strike which was cancelled due to the early 1990's recession.[9][10][11][12] McTiernan had originally desired Ford in the role in the first film and confirmed that "there was a great deal of scheming that went on to push Alec out of that part."[13] Kirkpatrick responded to Baldwin's claims by saying that negotiations with him to reprise the role had already broken due to his insistence on script approval.[9] Ford signed a three-picture contract to play Ryan after Baldwin's departure.[6][11]

McTiernan initially wanted to follow The Hunt for Red October by directing an adaptation of Clear and Present Danger using a script written by John Milius.[14][15] After the studio opted to adapt Patriot Games, he declined to direct because of his Irish-American background. Walter Hill, Kevin Reynolds, and John Badham were considered to replace McTiernan. Badham was almost hired but asked for too high of a fee, and Phillip Noyce was chosen instead. Donald Stewart returned from the first film to co-write the script with W. Peter Iliff.[16]

In the original novel, the assassination attempt was made on the Prince of Wales and many members of the British royal family appeared as important characters. As a result, they were replaced with fictitious characters in the screenplay, with Prince Charles being replaced by Lord Holmes, a nonexistent cousin of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.[14][17]

Filming[]

Shooting began on November 2, 1991. The budget was initially $28 million, but was raised to $40 million by Brandon Tartikoff. The movie was filmed on location in areas around London, at Royal Naval College, Greenwich, and at Pinewood Studios.[18] Scenes were also filmed at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.[19] Jack Ryan's home was filmed on the California coast and made to look like it was in Maryland.[20]

The scenes set at a terrorist camp in Libya were filmed in the desert near Brawley, California. To make the attack on the camp appear as infrared footage, actors wearing black body suits were filmed from a helicopter and the resulting video images were reversed in post-production.[21]

Patriot Games was the first movie to be allowed to film at the George Bush Center for Intelligence, CIA Headquarters.[22]

Filming also took place at Aldwych underground station for a sequence later in the film.[23] Harrison Ford accidentally hit Sean Bean with a boat hook while shooting the final scene; Bean has a scar over his eye as a result.[24]

Test audiences in April 1992 responded negatively to the original ending, which had Jack Ryan and Sean Miller fighting underwater. The ending was re-shot with a more explosive finale.[25][26] The reshoots and marketing caused the film's budget to expand to $65 million.[16]

The numerous changes between the film and the novel caused Clancy to distance himself from the film production.[27] Clancy was unhappy with the script and during production asked for his name to be taken off the film. He complained that the final attack scene was "unrealistic" and that he had not been shown any rushes. He said he was not sure a film would be made of Clear and Present Danger "because I think Patriot Games will turn out so bad."[28] However, Tartikoff later met Clancy to show him a rough cut of the film, and assuaged his concerns enough to guarantee that he would work with the studio again.[16]

Music[]

Patriot Games: Music From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Film score by
James Horner
ReleasedJune 9, 1992
Length45:10
LabelRCA Records
Jack Ryan soundtrack chronology
The Hunt for Red October
(1990) 		Patriot Games: Music From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
(1992) 		Clear and Present Danger
(1994)

On June 9, 1992, the original motion picture soundtrack was released by the RCA Records music label. The film's musical score was composed by James Horner and contains musical references to works by Aram Khachaturian (Adagio from "Gayane" Suite) and Dmitri Shostakovich (Symphony No. 5, 3rd mvt.). A music video is shown in an early scene featuring Clannad's song "Theme from Harry's Game", originally made for an ITV drama about The Troubles in 1982. All other vocal performances featured on the soundtrack were performed by Maggie Boyle.[29]

In 2013, a 2-disc expanded soundtrack album was released by La-La Land Records. Limited to 3000 copies, the album contains over 50 minutes of previously unreleased music (including cues by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and John Philip Sousa).[30]

Reception[]

Critical reception[]

I haven't read Clancy's Patriot Games, and for all I know this movie is faithful to his book, but on the basis of The Hunt for Red October, which I have read, I expected this one to be a little more cerebral and without the Indiana Jones ending.

—Roger Ebert, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times[31]

Despite receiving generally positive reviews, the film garnered controversy during its release, from Tom Clancy disowning the film, to critics complaining it was too different from the book.[32][33][34] Nonetheless the film has earned a 73% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 40 reviews. The site's consensus states: "Patriot Games doesn't win many points for verisimilitude, but some entertaining set pieces -- and Harrison Ford in the central role -- more than compensate for its flaws."[35]

Roger Ebert called it "absorbing" while also commenting that Harrison Ford "once again demonstrates what a solid, convincing actor he is".[31] Chris Hicks of the Deseret News mentioned how director Noyce gave the film "flourish and tension" while star Harrison Ford injected "a commanding sense of decency and humanity to the role of CIA analyst Jack Ryan, making it his own."[36]

Box office[]

The film was a financial success, debuting at the number one position for the weekend of June 5, 1992.[37] During that weekend, the film grossed $18,511,191 in business showing at 2,365 locations.[3] The film's revenue dropped by 39.5% in its second week of release, earning $11,208,134. For that particular weekend, the film remained in 1st place with an increased theater count of 2,396. Patriot Games went on to top out domestically at $83,351,587 in ticket sales and $94,700,000 in foreign business for a worldwide total of $178,051,587 through an initial 9-week theatrical run.[3] For 1992 as a whole, the film would cumulatively rank at a box office performance position of 14.[38]

References[]

  1. ^ "Patriot Games (15)". British Board of Film Classification. June 9, 1992. Archived from the original on March 6, 2018. Retrieved September 4, 2016.
  2. ^ Welkos, Robert W. (May 23, 1992). "Clancy's War Over 'Patriot Games' Ends". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on November 4, 2012. Retrieved January 6, 2011.
  3. ^ Jump up to: a b c "Patriot Games (1992)". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on July 12, 2018. Retrieved January 23, 2014.
  4. ^ Gardner, Eriq (February 11, 2021). "Judge Can't Figure Out Who Owns Rights to "Jack Ryan" Character". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved June 9, 2021.
  5. ^ "The Hunt for Red October". catalog.afi.com. Retrieved June 9, 2021.
  6. ^ Jump up to: a b Fleming, Michael (September 2, 1991). "Buzz: Test of Wills Over 'October' Sequels". Variety. 344 (8): 87.
  7. ^ Welkos, Robert W. (March 22, 1992). "MOVIES: Mr. Nice Guy Dives Back Into Action: Harrison Ford returns to the genre that made him a star. In 'Patriot Games,' he inherits the role of the C.I.A. agent from Alec Baldwin, but the production is in trouble with author Tom Clancy". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on November 4, 2012. Retrieved January 6, 2011.
  8. ^ Baldwin, Alec (March 23, 2011). "'Two and a Half Men' Is Better Than None". The Huffington Post. Archived from the original on March 13, 2011. Retrieved January 26, 2014.
  9. ^ Jump up to: a b Bettinger, Brendan (March 13, 2011). "Alec Baldwin Explains Why He Never Played Jack Ryan Again After THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER". Collider. Archived from the original on March 18, 2020. Retrieved March 16, 2020.
  10. ^ News, John Evan Frook, Los Angeles Daily. "STUDIO TALK OF PRODUCTION COST CUTS TURNS INTO ACTION". chicagotribune.com. Retrieved June 9, 2021.
  11. ^ Jump up to: a b Fleming, Charles (September 2, 1991). "Film: Baldwin quits 'Patriot Games'; Ford in?". Variety. Los Angeles. 344 (8): 9.
  12. ^ "Entertainment News for June 21, 1991". EW.com. Retrieved June 9, 2021.
  13. ^ Taylor, Drew (October 2, 2013). "Ranked: Tom Clancy Movies, From Worst To Best". IndieWire. Archived from the original on October 21, 2020. Retrieved March 17, 2020.
  14. ^ Jump up to: a b "Revisiting Patriot Games: The First Jack Ryan "Reboot"". Den of Geek. March 26, 2015. Retrieved March 16, 2020.
  15. ^ "Harrison Ford takes on Tom Clancy...again". EW.com. Archived from the original on March 9, 2021. Retrieved March 16, 2020.
  16. ^ Jump up to: a b c "Patriot Games". catalog.afi.com. Retrieved June 9, 2021.
  17. ^ Hinson, Hal (June 5, 1992). "'Patriot Games' (R)". Washington Post. Archived from the original on September 27, 2020. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
  18. ^ Movies: Mr. Nice Guy Dives Back Into Action Archived April 6, 2020, at the Wayback Machine Welkos, Robert M. LA Times, March 22, 1992.
  19. ^ Harrison Ford is on location in Annapolis, but nobody seems to care Archived April 6, 2020, at the Wayback Machine Norton, Monica. The Baltimore Evening Sun, Dec. 4, 1991.
  20. ^ "Harrison Ford's country home in 'Patriot Games'". Archived from the original on April 6, 2020. Retrieved April 6, 2020.
  21. ^ When the CIA Draws the Line, You Just Wing It Archived April 6, 2020, at the Wayback Machine Marx, Andy. LA Times, June 7, 1992.
  22. ^ CIA removes cloak of mystery for Patriot Games Archived April 6, 2020, at the Wayback Machine Engel, Joel. Chicago Tribune, June 19, 1992.
  23. ^ Badsey-Ellis, Antony; Horne, Mike (2009). The Aldwych Branch. Capital Transport. p. 104. ISBN 978-1-85414-321-1.
  24. ^ "Sean Bean: The Biography". Archived from the original on September 12, 2014. Retrieved September 12, 2014.
  25. ^ The End Archived April 6, 2020, at the Wayback Machine Kelley, Bill. The Sun Sentinel, June 21, 1992.
  26. ^ "Paramount to reshoot 'Patriot Games' ending". Archived from the original on April 6, 2020. Retrieved April 6, 2020.
  27. ^ Galbraith, Jane (April 30, 1992). "Paramount to Reshoot 'Patriot Games' Ending: Movies: Studio to change climactic boat scene after test audiences complained about film's ambiguous finale". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on February 21, 2014. Retrieved January 6, 2011.
  28. ^ "Clancy wants no credit for 'Patriot Games' film Author says script diverges from novel". Baltimore Sun. December 7, 1991. Archived from the original on December 1, 2017. Retrieved November 26, 2017.
  29. ^ "LA LA LAND RECORDS, Patriot Games - James Horner - Limited Edition". La-La Land Records. Archived from the original on July 1, 2014. Retrieved July 8, 2013.
  30. ^ "Expanded 'Patriot Games' Score by James Horner Released". Film Music Reporter. July 3, 2013. Archived from the original on July 7, 2013. Retrieved July 8, 2013.
  31. ^ Jump up to: a b "Patriot Games". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on April 1, 2014. Retrieved January 23, 2014.
  32. ^ Welkos, Robert W. (June 11, 1992). "Variety Editor's Letter Over Review Angers Employees". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on May 26, 2010. Retrieved January 6, 2011.
  33. ^ "Patriot Games". Entertainment Weekly. June 5, 1992. Archived from the original on April 21, 2009. Retrieved January 7, 2011.
  34. ^ "Patriot Games". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on October 11, 2012. Retrieved January 7, 2011.
  35. ^ "Patriot Games". Rotten Tomatoes. Archived from the original on December 29, 2011. Retrieved November 16, 2017.
  36. ^ "Film Review: Patriot Games". Deseret News. Archived from the original on October 5, 2013. Retrieved January 24, 2014.
  37. ^ Fox, David J. (June 16, 1992). "Weekend Box Office : 'Patriot,' 'Sister' Lead the Pack". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on November 4, 2012. Retrieved January 6, 2011.
  38. ^ "1992 DOMESTIC GROSSES". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on June 29, 2007. Retrieved January 23, 2014.

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