User reviews

If I were to make a quick summary of this movie, it would be "a good, but not great, action flick." I don't think this movie was intended to be innovative, to be great, to be memorable. What it was intended to be was entertaining, and it lived up to this expectation.

Harrison Ford is the master of remaining as low-key as possible. He has had so many films where he can over-emphasize, over-dramatize, and simply over-act. Ford has the maturity to keep this from happening, and he does so again in this film. Ford is supported quite well with such actors/actresses as James Earl Jones (reprising his role as Greer from The Hunt for Red October), Samuel L. Jackson, and Anne Archer. For an action flick, acting is much above average.

It was also suspenseful...thrilling. I thought the ending had a nice build-up and climax. I realize this is different from the book's ending...but remember, these are two different visions...not the same one. This brings up a big point in movie-watching: Comparing a movie to a book is the worst thing you can do. They are two completely different genres. More importantly, as I said before, they are two different visions.

I'm not a big action fan. I used to be, but anymore most stories are the same. To this end I would say Patriot Games is fairly mainstream. However, it was always fun to watch and sometimes thrilling to watch. I'm also not a big Tom Clancy fan, but I've given the movies based off his books a shot because again they are different visions. The result is (at least with Patriot Games) a good film to watch on a Saturday night with a bowl of popcorn. Don't expect great things, but don't expect to be disappointed, either.

Rating: 7/10

Patriot Games is a more than serviceable thriller, perhaps a bit out of date when viewing it now, but still a very effective good against evil piece. The source material is so dense and intricate it was always going to be hard to condense that into a 2 hour movie but I feel the makers manage to keep it fleshy whilst making the respective characters interesting and watchable. The acting on show is more than adequate, Harrison Ford is great in the role of Jack Ryan, he manages to portray him as a sensitive family man who can step up to the plate when things get ugly, and Anne Archer is solid enough as the wife and mother caught up in the web of nastiness unfolding.

The baddies are led by the brooding Sean Bean who is a little under written, whilst Richard Harris is sadly underused, but the action set pieces make their mark and thankfully we get a riveting final reel that cements the steady ride we have under taken. It is formulaic to a degree, but that is OK if the combined efforts of all involved are spot on, and here they are, 7/10.

A faction of the IRA attempt to kidnap Lord William Holmes, a member of the British Royal Family who also happens to be a Government minister, but the crime is thwarted by the courageous actions of Jack Ryan, an American tourist in London with his family. During the ensuing scuffle, Ryan shoots dead one of the terrorists, Patrick Miller. Miller's elder brother Sean is jailed for his part in the attack, but is rescued by his comrades, and vows vengeance on Ryan, who is a former marine and CIA operative. When Ryan realises that Sean Miller is targeting his family he returns to work for the CIA to help with the fight against terrorism.

There are a number of fairly obvious goofs and plot holes. No member of the British Royal Family could serve as a Government minister, as they are constitutionally obliged to remain politically neutral. If a foreign citizen were being made a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (one of the highest awards in the British honours system) he would be invited to a formal ceremony in Buckingham Palace to be knighted by the Queen in person. He would not be presented with the decoration in his own home by a junior member of the Royal Family. It seems unlikely that any Irish republican terror group would carry out an attack on American citizens on American soil, as to do so would risk losing the support their cause has long enjoyed among sections of the Irish-American community. As others have pointed out, it seems illogical for Ryan to take his family to their isolated summer home to get them away from Miller; doubtless the CIA could have found a safer location for them.

The film lacks the political implications of "Clear and Present Danger", Philip Noyce's next attempt to film a Tom Clancy thriller which involved Watergate-type misconduct by the President and his closest aides. (That film also starred Harrison Ford as Ryan). Despite the involvement of the IRA, "Patriot Games" makes no attempt to analyse the complexities of the Northern Ireland situation. The film also lacks any detailed characterisation. The moral divisions are straightforward- Ryan, his wife Cathy and his CIA colleagues are good and Miller and his gang are bad.

The film does, however, have a strong hero in Harrison Ford. Ford has always been good in the thriller genre, and gives another good performance here as Ryan, combining decency with a strong sense of intelligence. Anne Archer and Sean Bean are also good as Cathy and the villainous Miller. There is a good cameo from Polly Walker as Miller's glamorous but ruthless female associate Annette. Despite the occasional implausibilities of the plot, this is a tense and fast-moving thriller with some good action sequences. It is not Ford's best thriller (that must be either "Witness" or "The Fugitive"), but it is nevertheless a good one. 7/10

OK, so it has some plot holes, and I generally spend a good amount of time detailing for my husband the deviations from the novel (which are many, since Hollywood doesn't make many five-hour movies). And it's predictable and artless and has plenty of clichés. I make it a point not to read IMDB reviews for a movie until after I've written my own, but even so I can guess that this one has been torn apart on these points probably at least a dozen times. Now that that's over with, I'm going to admit that I like this movie. It feels like a tight thriller, good for those nights when I want entertainment with some minor complexity. I like to "go along for the ride", so to speak, even though I know how it ends. And going back to the first time I saw this, before I'd read the book, I remember being on the edge of my seat quite a bit.

Thora Birch does this film a lot of good. Her expressions and lines are quite well-acted, and she's cute without being syrupy. Harrison Ford is Harrison Ford; you either like him or you don't, and this movie isn't going to change your mind (I happen to like him).

Don't go renting this one if you want an artsy movie, or a beautiful movie, or a movie with a perfectly tight script. But if you can enjoy a film for simple entertainment value, and you like Harrison Ford ;), this is a good one for after the kids are in bed.

I can't say that I know much about Tom Clancy's novels or the character of Jack Ryan. Whether this is a honorable adaptation of the book I cannot say either, but as a thriller, Patriot Games struck me as weak. There are good performances from a sensational cast, a fair level of emotion to the story, and a nice score from James Horner, but the most obvious problem with Patriot Games, is that nothing much happens here.

While on holiday in England with his wife and daughter, Jack Ryan foils an IRA assassination attempt on one of the royal family. needless to say, Ryan becomes an automatic hero of Brittan, but shortly after returning home to Maryland, He is targeted by IRA terrorist Sean Miller for assassination, wanting revenge for the death of his brother. Can Ryan protect his family?

Harrison Ford plays a great Jack Ryan, no doubt there, but the movie is not as strong as he is. The story doesn't penetrate you in the way that a good thriller should. It is neither dramatic nor clever and is only mildly exciting. To say it is a bad film would be a huge over statement, it just needs work.

An older retired Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) is in England for a symposium of some nature. While there he witnesses an attempt on the life of a royal by some heavily armed terrorists. Jack goes into superspy mode, even at his advanced age, and takes out two terrorists while holding another at gunpoint.

This action of his makes him a hero in England but he becomes enemy number one to Sean Miller (Sean Bean), an extremist IRA member whose brother was killed by Jack Ryan. Anyone familiar with Sean Bean's cinematic history can figure out what happened to him.

I wasn't feeling this movie for two reasons and two reasons only:

1.) The sheer improbability of an aged, unarmed Jack Ryan getting involved in a terrorist shootout on foreign soil. Especially when his reasoning was "it just pissed me off." It pissed you off? You're a trained C.I.A. agent and former Marine but you can still be motivated to put your life in danger because it pissed you off.

2.) The sheer improbability of Sean Miller and friends being able to have the dearth of resources to commit a terrorist act in England and then safely get to America where they'd have the same resources to track down Jack Ryan and family. Is there no place they can't go?

Outside of these two crater sized pock marks the movie was good. It was a mix of investigative acumen, military technology, and combat skill. The movie was suspenseful as each side tried to stay one move ahead of the other like a high stakes chess match. There was a lot of maneuvering but it definitely was no game.

"Patriot Games" is an action movie like so many we have seen before, it's not a bad movie, it's an average one. I think it deserves 6.5 stars mainly because of the first half of the movie, which is interesting, but after that its quality diminish a lot.

The performances are OK, they are just what the film needed, the idea of the plot is interesting, but the biggest problem is that the movie last 15 minutes longer of what it was necessary.This movie would have been much better if it had only been a crime and thriller movie and not an action one.

The plot is about an ex CIA man Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) whose family is chased by a terrorist because Jack killed the terrorist's brother to save the life of an important British person.

"Patriot Games" is useful for killing time during one boring afternoon.

Harrison Ford is Jack Ryan, a former CIA agent, coming to London for a conference in British Naval Academy, only to find himself in the middle of a terrorist ambush against a distant cousin of the Royal Family.

Well, what do you know, he successfully disarms the terrorists, killing in the process the 17-year old brother of Sean Miller (Sean Bean), while the others manage to escape. Ryan instantly makes it to the top of Miller's enemy list and we understand it's only a matter of time before we get a hand-to-hand confrontation.

The time is 100 minutes during which Philp Noyce's "Patriot Games" fulfills every premise of an action/thriller: the bad guy's escape, the cowardly attack on Ryan's wife and daughter, a failed (but alarming) one on Ryan, and a cat-and-mouse chase via such exciting tools as political surveillance, mug shots, satellites and glimpses of memory. And after having initially declined the offer, Ryan finally accepts to get back to the CIA (all it took was to measure up how serious the threat against his family was). These are predictable elements meaning to provide the perfect dosage of adrenalin and suspense but what makes them work is the 'intelligence' involved in Ryan's quest for Miller, making him more of a thinker than a typical physical hero. The script insists enough on Ryan's expertise as an analyst.

And there is the whole political back-story, as if the so-called "Patriot Games" were not without rules, one of them being an understandable yet redundant bit of correctness. Basically, Noyce is extremely careful on depicting the villainous group as an independent and more fanatic branch of the Irish Republican Army lead by O'Donnell (Patrick Bergin) who was part of the initial attack. It's comprehensible for a film with international ambitions to play on the safe side not to lose the Irish audience, but we get the point more than needed. One of the IRA leaders is brutally killed in his bed, by O'Donnell's sexy girlfriend (Polly Walker) and the same O'Donnell kills a friend at short range, so the distance between the IRA and the bad guys is clearly and categorically established.

Yet did these precautions matter? For all the political context the script provides, it all leads up to the 'personal' story between Miller and Ryan, Miller who didn't give a damn about fighting for Ireland as soon as his brother hit the ground. Did it also matter when the portrayal of Arabs was more careless? After all, just put your terrorists in any desert camp in 'North Africa' (no need to specify the exact location), throw a name like Gaddafi (Saddam works sometimes) and that's it. I was glad there wasn't any character wearing a red Saudi top hat and shouting some Arab gibberish, to provide the little touch of authenticity. As usual, it's a camp in Libya and like all the camps in Libya, the one that welcomed the bad guys had to be bombed (recent events proved that reality could go that far).

Still, it was a nice touch to show the perplexed face of Harrison Ford, during the camp's bombing, looking from infrared screens, wounded 'terrorist' dragging their way out from fire. His reaction to one of the young upstarts uttering an enthusiastic "Now, that's a kill" while sipping coffee, says it all, the man has gotten soft, which means in our language, more 'human' and we understand how his 'family' lifestyle turned him into a thinker. And this is the sympathetic little twist "Patriot Games" gives us, a different Harrison Ford character, sweeter, gentler, only using force in case of necessary defense. In one of the film's boldest moves, he's prevented from a certain death by a Naval guard. This shows how vulnerable he truly is and how even his determination isn't enough to avoid the worst.

Another effective moment consisted on a shot on his face while he stares at a thick cloud of smoke coming from the freeway, indicating that a car (not any car) had crashed. This is certainly one of the film's most haunting moments as you can read the desperation of a man who realizes that his loved ones are also part of these damn games (although you wonder why they planned to kill him since killing his family and letting him live with that would have been enough a revenge) "Patriot Games" doesn't bring much freshness to the genre but surprisingly offers a hero who's not your typical cynical macho guy, with marital troubles. Ryan has a beautiful and devoted wife. I could have said that Anne Archer seemed to reprise her role from "Fatal Attraction", but the whole film borrows elements from Adrian Lyne's classic, like the car-accident, the big isolated family house, becoming ominous under a stormy night and the mandatory daughter.

Indeed, like for every family in trouble, it's a girl that accentuates the defenselessness when family comedies have young boys who wish their daddies would spend more time with them. But Thora Birch manages to appear like a smart but not precocious girl. The whole 'family' vibes feeling is clearly palpable all through the film, and it's pleasantly surprising how it is used even during the few exchanges with the intimidating James Earl Jones and Jack's buddy, played by a friendlier Samuel L. Jackson. Naturally, there is not much family feeling when the climax starts, especially when you got a fight in a speeding boat on fire about to hit rocks, a move that disappointed many Tom Clancy readers.

Speaking for me, I've never read Clancy, never saw "Hunt for Red October" either (but I'm looking forward to seeing it) so all I had were reverse expectations, I thought I was going to see an action-packed movie starring a super-heroic Harrison Ford, and I was pleasantly surprised by how intelligent and family oriented he was. I guess I'm among the ones who see the half-full glass.

Disclaimer: Review may be a bit biased as I have not read the Tom Clancy novel of the same name.

Patriot Games is a short thriller based on Tom Clancy's novel of the same name. It follows the events after an IRA assassination plot is foiled by CIA agent Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford). Sean Bean plays IRA renegade Sean Miller seeking revenge. Though all good performances, they are forgotten in this mediocre movie.

There are some beautiful set pieces that take the audience back and forth on different sides of the Atlantic. Yet, I found the plot tying all events together a bit too convenient to be believable.

Action is too far and few between to keep the audience captivated. Some things happen too conveniently. And the plot moves at a snail's pace.

3/5. Though I like espionage films, I couldn't find myself recommending this to anyone except the most devout Tom Clancy/Jack Ryan fans.

This is an outstanding thriller, a movie I have always enjoyed watching since it came out. Apparently a number of people also did since a few sequels followed featuring the main character ex-CIA analyst "Jack Ryan," played by Harrison Ford.

Sean Bean was excellent as the revenge-obsessed villain, a member of a "splinter group," as its labeled not really an IRA extremist, but one too out-of- control for any group. Ford is the man best able to stop him and the film is very interesting start-to-finish and smart enough not to overdo the violence. Suspenseful is probably the best word to describe the movie as Bean goes after Ford's family.

Anne Archer, as Ford's wife, along with the rest of the cast, actors such as Patrick Bergen, James Earl Jones, James Fox, Richard Harris and a young Thora Birch make this a well- acted movie.

This is simply one of the best thrillers I've ever seen and almost every scene is interesting.

Clearly Alec Baldwin was too exhausted after his submarine adventure in 1990, so Harrison Ford picked up the mantle of "Jack Ryan" - now a former CIA operative who is on the UK on holiday with his family. Hardly have the titles ended before he is embroiled in an IRA attempt to kidnap "Lord Holmes" (James Fox), a distant cousin of the Queen Mother. Intervening, he kills one of the attackers who happens to be the younger brother of the surviving attacker "Sean" (they kept it simple for Mr Bean). Of course he is sprung from police custody via some dinghies near Tower Bridge and next thing "Ryan" and family are the new targets of this vengeful terrorist cell. What now ensues is a really dry thriller that plods along with little to make it stand out. There is an irony that the IRA man is played by an Englishman, but neither Richard Harris nor Samuel L. Jackson really make much impression on this politically simplistic revenge vehicle for a star who is far from his best. The perilous scenarios rather lurch from frying pan to fire, but never with much jeopardy - before an ending at sea that at least gave the pyrotechnics folks something to do. It's not Tom Clancy's best book, and is really only a passable watch on screen.

Let me say that I have only seen this one, "The Hunt for Red October", and "Clear and Present Danger". I enjoyed this one and Red October a good bit. Was not really crazy for "Clear and Present Danger", I just for some reason found it rather boring compared to the other two movies. I do not know why this one is my favorite, but it just seemed to work for me in a way the next movie would not. Harrison Ford in the role trying to protect his wife and daughter from the revenge minded IRA terrorist had more of an emotional impact and really got you going whereas Present Danger just was missing that and basically banished Ryan's wife (the character Harrison Ford plays) to nothing more than a guest appearance or cameo. This one is about Jack Ryan who I think works for the CIA, he is over in England and spots in the nick of time a couple of IRA guys about to do some bad stuff. Well he basically thwarts them killing one of them and getting himself injured in the process. Well the other guy ends up going for revenge as the other guy killed was his brother. Some good action scenes and drama in this one and it has a really nice concluding scene. As an added bonus Richard Harris is also in it it in a fine supporting role and Sean Bean is great as the IRA terrorist. Of the three Clancy movies this one to me really hooks you in and has the best plot.

Released in 1992, "Patriot Games" is a Tom Clancy thriller about an ex-CIA agent, Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford), who has an inadvertent run-in with IRA terrorists while in England and kills one of them. When the vengeful brother of the slain terrorist (Sean Bean) escapes he zeroes-in on murdering Ryan's wife and daughter (Anne Archer and Thora Birch). Samuel L. Jackson, James Earl Jones and Richard Harris are also on hand, amongst other notables.

This is a well-done drama/thriller with an excellent score, realistic tone, top-of-the-line cast, great locations and a "Whoa Mama" scene in the first reel featuring the stunning Polly Walker. While the first half promises more than the second half delivers, it's still worthwhile. Ford is at the top of his game as the protagonist.

While the Ryan's homestead is on the east coast and many sequences in the movie were shot in Maryland and Virginia, their home scenes were interestingly shot at Morro Bay, Ca, and obviously so. It's more scenic, but it also provided the requisite cliff for the final act.

The film runs 117 minutes and was shot in Virginia, Maryland, England and California.

GRADE: B-

London seems authentic even though the plot is properly contrived claptrap. Ford is playing the wholesome good guy with a couple of stings of passion, and that's pleasant enough but his uniquely sedate charm can't quite carry a plus-2 hour flick with this many cliches in it. It's not particularly well written and it sort of plain.

I have wanted to see this film for quite a while now. Ive seen The Hunt For Red October(1990), and Clear and Present Danger(1994), and Patriot Games is much better than them. Patriot Games is a great thinking man's thriller, although its much less difficult to follow than "Clear and Present Danger". It has plenty of suspense and action, and Ford's acting is terrific. I am so surprised that Patriot Games is often considered the worst Clancy film, and "The Hunt For Red October" considered the best, but I think it should be the other way around. Overall a great suspenseful movie. 9 out of 10

First of all, I'm not a Tom Clancy fan, only because for whatever reason I've never gotten around to reading any of his books. I would say it's because so many of them are so huge, but I've always been a voracious reader. I've read almost all of Stephen King's novels, which are also pretty huge, and I'm usually reading three or four at a time. At any rate, I have nothing to offer as far as how closely the movie follows the source material, although I really think this is incredibly important when adapting books to movies.

I have read a lot of criticisms of Patriot Games (and even more of the sequel, Clear and Present Danger), and while I agree with mostly all of it, I still think Patriot Games is a good couple hours of good clean cinematic fun. But maybe that's just because I love Harrison Ford.

Ebert makes the obvious complaint that Jack Ryan, when he finds himself in danger, sends his family to a remote cabin rather than a secure bunker at CIA headquarters, and it's true that this detracts from the movie, but you have to have a movie somehow, and that's a situation where making the smart, real life decision would cancel out the rest of the movie. If everyone in movies made the smart decision all the time, we wouldn't even have a horror genre, for example.

Jack Ryan is described in Clancy's novels as having "undistinguished features," which makes Harrison Ford seem to me like the perfect choice to play him, since I've always thought that, even though he's a brilliant and tremendously loved actor, he can't really act with his face very well. Consider one of my favorite examples of this, the close up shot of his face when he sends that kid into surgery in The Fugitive. You can literally see the effort he's putting into making his face do something moving, and it's just not happening. But the thing it, the shot still works. I don't get it, it's a mystery, as Philip Henslowe might say.

Harrison Ford has played more complex characters (and less complex, of course), and Jack Ryan gets better than this, but Patriot Games is a fun introduction of Ford playing the role, and is especially a must see for Clancy fans.

Even after almost 30 years it is still absolutely worth seeing and entertaining. Harrison Ford in his heyday in a beautiful, straightforward thriller with no claim to reality. A bit like "96 Hours" in the 90s.

Tom Clancy's novel is actually set before The Hunt for Red October, showing how he came to be in the CIA. While it makes for entertaining reading, there are moments of unintentional hilarity that really spoil it when it comes to passages involving the Royal Family.

This film, set after The Hunt for Red October - a necessity with the older Harrison Ford playing Jack Ryan - has it's moments of silliness. Some serious off-key location shooting for scenes in Britain provide amusement, particularly a scene clear showing the Transporter Bridge in Middlesbrough which I've seen up close and personal. Rather out of the way considering Sean Bean's character was being transported from London to the Isle of Wight... Then there are the usual national archetypes.

While the film does cop out a bit by inventing a Royal Family member for the bad guys to target, and doing away with the black militants in the book who help out the bad guys, on it's own terms, it manages to be an effective thriller, with some standout moments that will have your heart in your throat. The best part of the film depicts an SAS raid, as seen by infrared satellite, and we see some of the CIA guys not even bat an eyelid, giving dry commentary while watching real people being killed on live transmission. The climactic boat chase maybe more appropriate for a Hollywood action film than a Tom Clancy thriller, it does get the blood pumping.

While Harrison Ford added some more star power to this film series, his presence completely changed everything. Jack Ryan's presence in The Hunt for the Red October was more subdued, this version proved to be a more proactive version of Tom Clancy's premier protagonist. While some feel this is the better of the original series, my contention is this film is a far second. It didn't have the star power or the dramatic tension which made Red October so successful. I will say this, it is quite interesting to see Sean Bean and Samuel L. Jackson in early incantations of their current personas. While this is better than most action-drama films, it still ranks below the Red October.

Harrison Ford kicks some major butt in this film and proves again that he is the leading action star of his generation. Ford's action movie's never really seem silly, they always seem real. Alec Baldwin should have never let the character of Jack Ryan go, because Ford now personifies the super agent. Nice direction from Phillip Noyce and a great score from James Horner make this a very good action film.

Patriot Games is a very well done action movie. I didn't feel dumbed down by the plot and everyone took their role seriously. Harrison Ford is the best action star of his generation and this movie is a brillant example of how Hollywood can sometimes make a good action picture. The film is well cast and the direction by Phillip Noyce is top notch. Patriot Games is well worth your while, especially if you like smart action pictures and Harrison Ford.

A lot of absolutely key points in the book we're not omitted but altered into irrelevance. Important scenes and characters were changed. I didn't like the book much but it was much better than the screen adaptation. I may have enjoyed this more had I watched the movie first but the character and plot development in the book were far superior. Sean Bean's character was well played but changed in a few minor ways that took it too far from the character established by Clancy on paper.

The funny anecdotes of the book were omitted in favour of more serious plot variations of similar facts.

It was more like I watched a brief interpretation of four or five parts of the novel. The book had the length to be its own TV season.

I know this movie is 31 years old, but it missed out on so much opportunity from this book in favour of abbreviation.