The Hunt for Red October Review

Most people don't have the time, money, or energy to watch a lot of movies, so when you do get a chance to watch something, you want it to be good. That's why Rotten Tomatoes exists: to give a snapshot of whether a movie is worth your time. But does it always work? I'll be watching all of Rotten Tomatoes’ Certified Fresh movies from this Wikipedia list starting in the year 1990, the decade I was born, and we'll see if these movies are really worth the hype.

Movie 4 of 1990

The Hunt for Red October, directed by John McTiernan, takes itself very seriously in a way that I found unnecessary. This Oscar winner for Best Sound Editing could be summed up in one word: inconsistent. I'll admit, this genre isn't my cup of tea, but I do wish it had been more fun. I got pretty bored multiple times while watching this.

The film seemed to have a protagonist problem as the main focus kept switching between Marko Ramius (Sean Connery) and Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin). There isn't inherently a problem with having dual protagonists, but it felt like we spent too much time away from Jack. Every time he was reintroduced to the narrative, I almost forgot that he was even involved. This is most likely because Connery is the bigger name, meaning he gets more screen time, but it didn't really serve the story. Then again, I've never read the book this is based on, so maybe that's true to the source material.

The one thing I really could never get over was the inconsistency in the Russian accents. The only person who seemed to be trying, to varying degrees of success, was Sam Neill. He was by far my favorite part of this movie. Connery was perhaps attempting the accent at the beginning of the film and also in the only emotionally charged scene, so in my opinion, the best scene, where he and Neill discuss what they want to do in America. The rest of the time, he just sounded like typical Sean Connery, which maybe that's what some audiences want. His voice is iconic after all. Other than that, everyone else just sounded British, especially Tim Curry.

I know that on paper the stakes are pretty high, but I just didn't feel that in what was being shown to me. I think the movie thought that the audience would care more about the American characters due to blind patriotism. That was probably a sound strategy in 1990, but it didn't really work for me today. I need to be given characters that I can root for, and I just didn't have that for anyone. No one had much of a backstory, and when one was shoehorned in, it didn't feel like enough. A few characters died or almost died, and it wasn't the gut punch for me that I feel was the intention.

Again, I will admit, this isn’t the kind of movie that I typically go for, so take anything I say with a grain of salt. Some aspects definitely have their merits. I understand why this won a sound editing Oscar. Things like the sound and even the production design were very high quality. I thought the sheer scale of the submarine was very cool.

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 88%

Is it worth the hype?:

It certainly wasn’t for me. My husband did really enjoy it, though. I wish the characterizations and emotional beats went a little deeper, but perhaps this wasn’t intended to be that kind of movie. Check it out if you enjoy a male-centric political thriller, but maybe skip it if that isn’t your thing.