Sean Connery month: The Hunt for Red October

A retrospective by Brooks Rich

To discuss a legend like Sean Connery, one would think I would start with Dr. No and go from there. We will get there but I decided to start with a film that would also let me make up some ground for the canceled John McTiernan month from awhile ago. McTiernan ends his most famous hat trick of films, starting with Predator in 1987 and concluding with the amazing action-thriller The Hunt For Red October from 1990, based on the book by Tom Clancy.

Sean Connery is Marko Ramius, a Soviet submarine commander who is taking the newest Soviet sub out for a test run. The sub, the Red October, is able to move silently through the water and past the sonar of the US navy, meaning they can have nuclear warheads off the coast without warning. Ramius thinks this is unacceptable and too much power for his country to have. He has decided to defect and turn the Red October over. The US and Soviets are after him. The US thinks he has gone crazy and is coming to launch on the US, save for one man, a CIA analyst named Jack Ryan, played by Alec Baldwin.

Got give credit to McTiernan for this film. There was a brief moment in time where he was the best action director working. While Hunt For Red October is no Die Hard, it is still an insanely good action thriller. It's more of a chess game than a balls to the wall action film.

Connery commands the screen in this film, no pun intended. He is at his most charismatic and intense here. There are different eras of Connery's career in my opinion. There is of course the Bond era. From there Bond era he would play a variety of different characters in the late '70s and early '80s with films like The Man Who Would Be King, Outland, and In the Name of the Rose. Starting with The Untouchables, Connery would enter the badass old guy stage of his career, playing intense badass old men who are always the toughest guy in the room. Ramius is sort of a mix of the tough old guy and Bond.

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