Movies
A Case Of The Book Is Better Than Movie: “Patriot Games”
I am going to be that guy. The book was way better than the movie.
“When CIA analyst Jack Ryan interferes with an IRA assassination, a renegade faction targets him and his family for revenge.”
Director: Phillip Noyce
Writers: Tom Clancy, W. Peter Illiff, Donald E. Stewart
Staring: Harrison Ford, Sean Bean, Anne Archer, Patrick Bergin, Thora Birch
Release Date: June 5, 1992
IMDB
I am going to be that guy. The book was way better than the movie.
There, I got it out of my system. Now we can move on.
Patriot Games (1992) is the origin story of the cinematic version of Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan. We meet the man as a professor at the Naval Academy traveling to London for a speaking engagement with Cathy Ryan (Anne Archer) and their daughter Sally (Thora Birch).
The story vaults into action when there is an attempt to abduct members of the royal family by Irish nationalist. Jack is a passerby as the violence is unfolding, and he takes it upon himself to intervene and save the family. In the process of becoming a national hero to England, Jack shoots and kills one of the terrorists.
Sean Miller (Sean Bean) is one of the orchestrators of the kidnapping attempt, and Ryan foiled their mission and killed his little brother. As Patriot Games unfolds, we see Sean become more fanatical about getting revenge on Jack for the pain he has caused. Stress levels rise in Annapolis when Sean escapes from captivity. Now with an international terrorist with a personal vendetta, Jack begins taking steps to protect himself and his family. He re-ingratiates himself in the CIA, and so begins the life and career of one of literature’s greatest spies.
Looking at the IMDB page for Patriot Games, it is not a surprise at all to see that Tom Clancy disassociated himself from the movie after he first read the script. The cinematic version of this story is simplified to an elementary school level compared to what Clancy wrote.
The biggest difference is in the character of Sean Miller. Sean Bean plays the part with a bit of unhinged evil. He is somewhat calculating, but his motivations are more vendetta hued than nationalist pride enthused. There is far more depth to the character of Sean in Patriot Games, the book. His relationship with Kevin O’Donnell (Patrick Bergin) is more nuanced than the simple leader-mentor dialogue shared in the movie. Sean Miller in the book was really scary; he was out-smarting the CIA and it was as much of a battle of wits as it was a battle with guns.
I knew that Patriot Games the movie was going to be different from Patriot Games the book once the courtroom scene took place. Sean Miller is sentenced in both media, but the length of time spent in the courtroom and the emphasis on the sequence are significantly lessened in the movie.
In the book, Ryan goes at it with the defense lawyer, battling with verbal barbs and taking his toe right up to the line of danger and staring it right in the face. Ryan does not back down when he is pushed and he can talk his way out of any potential trouble, and we are in Jack’s head when he realizes the lawyer for Sean makes a mistake.
There is none of this complexity in the movie. Zero. The highlight of the courtroom scene in the movie is Sean Miller screaming at Jack about him killing his baby brother. Uh…, that never happens in the book. In the book, Sean Miller is stoic and Jack remembers the stillness of his eyes and how they evoked pure evil. There is no outburst. It is the stillness that is most scary.
I am here to say that I am somewhat jaded, and my admiration for the beginning and ending of Tom Clancy’s book shades my thoughts on Patriot Games the movie. I am not sure director Phillip Noyce had any input on the script, but the majority of my disappointment in the movie falls on the writers W. Peter Iliff and Donald E. Stewart. The neutered the story, the characters, and the overall enjoyment of the story.
Patriot Games is a perfectly passable spy movie in the grand scheme of things. In the eyes of someone who has no previous knowledge of the book or of the characters Tom Clancy created, then Patriot Games is going to get a passing grade. However, for me, in my first viewing of this movie after reading the book, it falls below the Mendoza line by just a hair.
As of early August 2023, Patriot Games is streaming on Amazon Prime.
STANKO RATING: C-
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