Patriot Games

Annotation for KRRR! 2017 by Lucia Brutovská

The main character Jack Ryan has given up his successful career as a CIA analyst, is devoted to his loving family and lectures to the youngest generation of agents. However, in the first minutes of the film, he shows the world how much "he who can't, teaches" is just a saying and that he has definitely not lost his skills as a top agent. On a business trip to London, he saves the royal family from a terrorist attack by the Irish Republican Army. He becomes a national hero - both in America and in Great Britain. However, the brother of the Irish extremist Sean Miller dies during the action, and he decides to take revenge. Ryan's family becomes a target and he is forced by circumstances to return to service. The film's narrative plays with the viewer in the same way that the terrorist Miller plays with Ryan. It does not limit our knowledge to Ryan and his findings, but it does not provide us with enough information about Miller and his plans. The viewer begins to become paranoid after a while, as he and Ryan sense danger in every move and expect an attack from any direction. On screen, we see a total of three action clashes between the villain and the hero, which gradually gain in intensity. The last action scene in particular contains everything that a good action should inspire and can be a proverbial treat on a 70mm film and on the big screen in Krnov. From today's perspective, the insight into the cutting-edge technology of the CIA of the time is also curious, when the hero decides to attack suspects based on enlarged and blurred satellite footage. The film is also attractive thanks to the performances of Samuel L. Jackson in a CIA uniform or Sean Bean with an Irish accent in the role of the initially quite sympathetic villain.

Jack Ryan is the central character in the fictional world of many novels by American writer Tom Clancy, with The Patriots' Game being the second of them – and the face of secret agent Ryan has been worn by several actors, similar to James Bond. After Alec Baldwin in The Hunt for Submarines (1990), the role was taken over by Harrison Ford in The Patriots' Game and Clear Danger (1994), who was then followed by Ben Affleck (The Great Fear, 2002) and Chris Pine (Jack Ryan: Undercover, 2014). Jack Ryan is currently heading to television as a series, played by John Krasinski.