The Hunt for Red October is a 1990 film based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Tom Clancy. It was directed by John McTiernan and stars Sean Connery as Captain Marko Ramius and Alec Baldwin as Jack Ryan.
The Hunt for Red October received mostly negative critical reviews from many major publications upon its theatrical release, but has received critical acclaim since, including 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. It was one of the top grossing films of the year, grossing $122 million in North America and $200 million worldwide. The film won the Academy Award for Sound Editing in 1991.
Plot
Marko Ramius (Sean Connery) is captain of the Soviet ballistic missile submarine Red October, which features caterpillar drive--a revolutionary silent propulsion system that renders the boat virtually undetectable. At the start of the film, Ramius takes the boat out to sea for exercises with the submarine V.K. Konovalov, commanded by Captain Tupolev (Stellan Skarsgård), a former student of Ramius.
Once underway, Ramius murders political officer Ivan Putin (Peter Firth), the one man aboard not under his command and the only man aboard besides himself who knows the sub's official orders. Ramius then burns the original orders and informs the crew that their mission is to conduct nuclear missile drills off America's east coast. The USS Dallas, an American submarine on patrol nearby, detects Red October but loses contact once Ramius engages the silent drive.
The next morning, CIA analyst Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) briefs several senior U.S. government officials on the departure of Red October and the threat it poses. In the briefing, Ryan learns that the Soviet Navy has deployed the bulk of its Atlantic fleet to find and sink Red October. The officials in the briefing fear that Ramius may be planning an unauthorized first strike against the U.S., but Ryan suggests that Ramius plans to defect. Ryan is sent out into the North Atlantic with a brief opportunity to prove his theory before the U.S. Navy will be ordered to sink Red October.
While under way, Red October's caterpillar drive suddenly fails, and sabotage is suspected. No longer silent, the sub comes under attack by Soviet forces and begins a series of risky maneuvers through undersea canyons. Meanwhile, Seaman Jones (Courtney B. Vance), a sonar analyst aboard Dallas, reconstructs Red October's path and plots an intercept course. Ryan learns of his findings and arranges a hazardous mid-ocean rendezvous to get aboard Dallas, where he convinces the sub's Captain, Bart Mancuso (Scott Glenn) to attempt communication with Ramius through morse code in order to determine his true intentions. Ramius, stunned that the Americans guessed his plan to defect, accepts their cooperation and agrees to a new course.
Nearing the Grand Banks, Ramius stages a nuclear reactor emergency and orders the bulk of his crew to abandon ship, telling Red October's doctor that he will scuttle the sub rather than let it be captured. After Ramius submerges, Ryan, Mancuso and Jones come aboard via mini-sub, at which point Ramius formally requests asylum in the United States for himself and his officers.
Thinking their mission is complete, the Red October's skeleton crew are surprised by a torpedo attack from Konovalov, which has tracked them to the Grand Banks. As the two Soviet subs maneuver against each other, the Red October's cook (and apparently the saboteur) reveals himself and opens fire, fatally wounding Ramius's first officer before retreating into the missile launch area. Ryan follows, finds the saboteur and guns him down just before he can detonate one of the missiles and destroy the sub.
Meanwhile, with some help from Dallas, Red October makes a series of evasive maneuvers, causing one of Konovalov's own torpedoes to circle around and destroy it. The evacuated crew of Red October on board a U.S. Navy rescue ship witness this explosion and, not knowing that there is a second Soviet sub in the area, they assume it was Red October that was destroyed. Their subterfuge complete, Ryan and Ramius sail Red October to a haven in the Penobscot River in Maine.
Cast
- Sean Connery as Captain 1st Class Marko Ramius, Commanding Officer of the Red October
- Alec Baldwin as Jack Ryan, PhD.
- Scott Glenn as Commander Bart Mancuso, Commanding Officer of the USS Dallas
- Sam Neill as Captain 2nd Class Vasily Borodin, Executive Officer of the Red October
- James Earl Jones as Vice Admiral James Greer, CIA
- Joss Ackland as Ambassador Andrei Lysenko
- Richard Jordan as Dr. Jeffrey Pelt, National Security Advisor
- Peter Firth as Senior Lieutenant Ivan Putin, Political Officer of the Red October
- Tim Curry as Senior Lt./Dr. Yevgeniy Petrov, Chief Medical Officer of the Red October
- Ronald Guttman as Senior Lieutenant Melekhin, Chief Engineer of the Red October
- Michael Welden as Captain-Lieutenant Grigoriy Kamarov, Navigator of the Red October
- Boris Lee Krutonog as Senior Lieutenant Victor Slavin, Chief Helmsman of the Red October
- Courtney Vance as Sonar Technician 2nd Class Ronald "Jonesey" Jones, Sonar Technician of the USS Dallas
- Stellan Skarsgård as Captain 2nd Class Viktor Tupolev, Commanding Officer of the V.K. Konovalov
- Jeffrey Jones as Skip Tyler - Naval Academy Instructor/Consultant
- Timothy Carhart as Lt. Bill Steiner
- Anthony Peck as Lt. Cmdr. "Tommy" Thompson, Executive Officer of the USS Dallas
- Larry Ferguson as Watson, Chief of the Boat of the USS Dallas
- Fred Dalton Thompson as Rear Admiral Joshua Painter, Commander of the Enterprise Carrier Battle Group
- Daniel Davis as Captain Charlie Davenport, Commanding Officer of the USS Enterprise
- Sven-Ole Thorsen as Chief of the Boat of the Red October
- Gates McFadden as Caroline Ryan, M.D.
- Tomas Arana as Cook's Assistant Igor Loginov, the Red October's cook, also a GRU sleeper agent.
- Ned Vaughn as Seaman Beaumont - USS Dallas
- Peter Zinner as Admiral Yuri Ilyich Padorin
- Ray Reinhardt as CIA Director Judge Arthur Moore
- Louise Borras as Sally Ryan
- Peter Jason as Commander of USS Reuben James (uncredited)
- Mark Rodney as Assistant Joint Chief of Staff (uncredited)
Production
Producer Mace Neufeld optioned Tom Clancy's novel after reading the galley proofs in February 1985. Despite the book becoming a best seller, no Hollywood studio was interested because of its content. Neufeld said, "I read some of the reports from the other studios, and the story was too complicated to understand."[2] After one and half years, he finally got a high-level executive at Paramount Pictures to read Clancy's novel and agree to develop it into a film.
Screenwriters Larry Ferguson and Donald Stewart worked on the screenplay while Neufeld approached the United States Navy in order to get their approval. They were initially reluctant because of the fear that top secret information or technology might be revealed. However, several admirals were fans of Clancy's book and reasoned that the film could do for submariners what Top Gun did for the Navy's jet fighter pilots.[2] Captain Michael Sherman, director of the Navy's western regional information office in Los Angeles, suggested changes to the script that would present the Navy in a positive light.[3]
The Navy gave the filmmakers unprecedented access to their submarines, allowing them to photograph unclassified sections of USS Chicago and USS Portsmouth to use in set and prop design. Key cast and crew members took rides in subs including Alec Baldwin and Scott Glenn taking an overnight trip on USS Salt Lake City. Glenn, who played the commander of USS Dallas, trained for his role by temporarily assuming the identity of a submarine captain on board the USS Houston (which portrayed USS Dallas in most scenes).[2] The sub's crew all took "orders" from Glenn, who was being prompted by the actual commanding officer.[2] Glenn has prior military experience as a U.S. Marine. Alec Baldwin also learned how to steer a Los Angeles-class submarine. Some of the extras portraying the Dallas crew were real-life U.S. Navy submariners, including the pilot of the DSRV, Lieutenant Commander George Billy, the actual commander of the DSRV. Submariners from San Diego were cast as extras after it was determined it was easier to hire them instead of training actors to "play" submariners. Crew members from USS La Jolla, including Lt. Mark Draxton, took leave to participate in filming. According to an article about the filming in Sea Classics magazine, at least two sailors from the Atlantic Fleet-based Dallas took leave and participated in the Pacific Fleet-supported filming. The crew of USS Houston called their month-long filming schedule the "Hunt for Red Ops." During this time Houston made over 40 emergency surfacing "blows" for rehearsal and for the cameras.[2]
Baldwin was approached to do the film in December 1988 but he was not told for what role. Austrian actor Klaus Maria Brandauer was cast as Soviet sub commander Marko Ramius but two weeks into filming he had to quit due to a prior commitment.[2] The producers quickly faxed a copy of the script to Sean Connery who, at first, declined the offer because the script didn't make any sense to him. There was no cold war. He was indeed missing the first page of the script which stated the film was set in the past and then agreed to do it. He arrived in Los Angeles on a Friday and was supposed to start filming on Monday but he requested a day to rehearse and get into the role.[2]
Estimates for the film's budget ranged from $30 – 50 million with much of it going to the Navy for use of their equipment and personnel. The U.S. Navy lent the film crew USS Houston, which doubled for USS Dallas, USS Enterprise, helicopters, two frigates, and a dry-dock crew.[3]
Filming in actual submarines was deemed impractical and so five soundstages on the Paramount backlot were used. Two 50-foot square platforms housing mock-ups of Red October and USS Dallas were built, standing on top of hydraulic gimbals that simulated the sub's movements. Connery recalled, "It was very claustrophobic. There were 62 people in a very confined space, 45 feet above the stage floor. It got very hot on the sets, and I'm also prone to sea sickness. The set would tilt to 45 degrees. Very disturbing."[3] The veteran actor shot for four weeks and the rest of the production shot for additional months on location in Port Angeles, Washington to the waters off Los Angeles.[3]
To keep the audience oriented, each country's submarine had its own background color scheme: Soviet submarines, such as Red October and Konovalov, had interiors done in black with silver trim. American ships, such as Dallas and Enterprise, had gray interiors. However, during one scene when Dallas goes to a higher alert status it was flooded with red light.
Early filming was done aboard USS Reuben James in the area of the Juan de Fuca Strait and Puget Sound in March 1989. The ship operated out of the coast guard Station at Port Angeles. The SH-60B detachment from the world famous Battlecats of HSL-43 operated out of NAS Whidbey Island, after being displaced by the filmcrew. Most underwater scenes were actually filmed using thick smoke with a model sub connected to 12 cables suspended above giving the model precise, smooth control for turns. Computer generated effects, in their infancy at the time, were added to create the bubbles and other aquatic artifacts such as particulates in the water.
John Milius was requested by Sean Connery to write material for him and the Russian parts of the film.[4]
Reaction
The Hunt for Red October debuted in 1,225 theaters on March 2, 1990, grossing $17 million on its opening weekend, more than half its budget.[1] The film went on to gross $122 million in North America with a worldwide total of $200 million.[1]
Critical reception
The film received negative critical reviews from many major publications upon its theatrical release but was one of the top grossing films of the year. The Washington Post's Hal Hinson criticized the film in his review, commenting, "Nothing much happens, at least not onscreen ... There isn't much to look at. When the action sequences finally come, the underwater images are murky and impossible to follow."[5] Vincent Canby in his review for The New York Times wrote, "Mr. McTiernan is not a subtle director. Punches are pulled constantly. The audience is told by word and soundtrack music when it should fear the worst, though the action on the screen gives the lie to such warnings."[6] Newsweek's David Ansen wrote, "But it's at the gut level that Red October disappoints. This smoother, impressively mounted machine is curiously ungripping. Like an overfilled kettle, it takes far too long to come to a boil."[7] Roger Ebert, however, called it "a skillful, efficient film that involves us in the clever and deceptive game being played."[8] Nick Schager, for Slant magazine's review, notes, "The Hunt for Red October is a thrilling edge-of-your-seat trifle that has admirably withstood the test of time."[9] Currently, the film has a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Cold War implications
The film caused a minor sensation in the black projects / submarine warfare technology community. In one scene, where Dallas is chasing Red October through the submarine canyon, the crew can be heard calling out that they have various "milligal anomalies." This essentially outed the use of gravimetry as a method of silent navigation in US submarines. Thought to be a billion dollar black project, the development of a full-tensor gravity gradiometer by Bell Aerospace was a classified technology at the time. It was thought to be deployed on only a few Ohio class submarines after it was first developed in 1973. Within a few months after the film was released, Bell Aerospace partially declassified the technology, ultimately leading to its sale to Bell Geospace, which still uses the technology for oil exploration purposes.[10]
See also
References
- ^ a b c "The Hunt for Red October". Box Office Mojo. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=huntforredoctober.htm. Retrieved 2007-12-03.
- ^ a b c d e f g Thomas, Bob (March 2, 1990). "High-Tech Novel Took Five Years to Reach Screen". Associated Press.
- ^ a b c d Donohue, Cathryn (March 2, 1990). "Red October Surfaces as a Movie". Washington Times.
- ^ http://au.movies.ign.com/articles/401/401150p11.html
- ^ Hinson, Hal (March 2, 1990). "Red October: Full Speed Astern". Washington Post.
- ^ Canby, Vincent (March 2, 1990). "Connery as Captain of a Renegade Soviet Sub". The New York Times. http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.html?title1=HUNT%20FOR%20RED%20OCTOBER%2c%20THE%20%28MOVIE%29&title2=&reviewer=Vincent%20Canby&pdate=19900302&v_id=23882.
- ^ Ansen, David (March 2, 1990). "The Hunt for Red October". Newsweek.
- ^ Ebert, Roger (March 2, 1990). "The Hunt for Red October". Chicago Sun-Times. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19900302/REVIEWS/3020301/1023. Retrieved 2007-10-25.
- ^ Schager, Nick (2003). "The Hunt for Red October". Slant. http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/film_review.asp?ID=696. Retrieved 2007-10-25.
- ^ "Bell gradiometer history". http://www.bellgeo.com/corporate/corporate_history.html. Retrieved 2008-12-27.
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