MOVIE REVIEW : The ‘Games’ Tough Guys Play

A word of advice to the miscreants of the world: Don’t get Jack Ryan angry.

That would be John Patrick Ryan, gone from the Marines, gone from the CIA, but always near at hand when an international crisis threatens. And Ryan is a sight when aroused: His eyes narrow, his shoulders square, his jaw juts forward, and he seems fully capable of stopping any and all threats to national as well as personal security all by himself.

Although in some ways as capable as its hero, “Patriot Games” (citywide) could use more of the gentleman’s moxie. The second of technomeister Tom Clancy’s novels to be filmed, “Games” is a perfectly adequate action thriller that neither disappoints nor exhilarates. If it doesn’t exactly crackle with energy, it lets off a good buzz now and again, and, depending on your mood, it may seem churlish to ask for more than that.

His days as an analyst for the agency now a thing of the past, Naval Academy instructor Ryan (Harrison Ford) is in London when we catch up with him, combining a family vacation with a speech on nautical doings. While he addresses his British colleagues, wife Cathy (Anne Archer) and inevitably precocious daughter Sally (Thora Birch) pass the time looking in on the guards at Buckingham Palace.

Minding their own business in the same neck of the woods are a pair of renegade Irish terrorists, the Miller brothers, fiendishly intent on blowing up Lord Holmes (James Fox), a cousin of the queen. Ryan almost literally stumbles on their attempt, and, motivated by what he later sheepishly characterizes as “rage, pure rage,” he effectively rains on the boys’ parade, seriously frustrating commando Sean Miller (Sean Bean) and causing him to swear a particularly nasty revenge.

Miller, it turns out, is no ordinary sod but a hardened killing machine whose idea of a good time is blowing away parish priests during confession. And he is no run-of-the-mill IRA terrorist either, but rather a member of a lethal renegade branch, prepared to stop at nothing to achieve their nefarious, if not exactly well-articulated, aims. Not the kind of guy you want to hold a grudge against you.

Oblivious to all this, Ryan returns to the States, and Mrs. R. returns to her supermom existence as perhaps the only top eye surgeon in America who finishes up at the hospital early enough to personally collect her daughter at school. The Ryans may have forgotten all about Sean Miller, but he has hardly forgotten about them, a state of affairs that soon gets Jack Ryan angry all over again.

As adapted by W. Peter Iliff and Donald Stewart from Clancy’s novel, “Patriot Games” (rated R for violence, sexuality and language) is not a notably ambitious film. Filled with the usual complement of spies, moles and double agents, and seemingly more concerned with avoiding missteps (which it mostly does) than breaking anything resembling new ground, the script falters only when it tries too hard to bring a little repartee into the Ryans’ four-square home life.

Australian Phillip Noyce, whose earlier work included the atmospheric Judy Davis-starring “Heatwave” as well as the nautical thriller “Dead Calm,” was a solid choice to direct here, and a solid job is what he provides. The film’s frequent action sequences are crisply done, the technology that Clancy is known for is skillfully visualized, and if tension is not exactly built to the sticking point, there is enough of it to leave an audience feeling satisfied.

“Patriot Games’ ” best feature, and its biggest drawing card, is Harrison Ford, who took over the role created by Alec Baldwin in “The Hunt for Red October.” Ford’s hero-next-door persona is essential to the success of films like this, films that revolve around the fantasy that your average suburban American male, if pushed to the wall, could outwit all the hooligans in Christendom. Good as Baldwin was, it is difficult to imagine this particular film without Ford’s presence.

There is another fantasy involved in the lure “Patriot Games” has for an American audience, one that is a bit more hidden. Its portrait of the CIA as a crack operation, able to swiftly enforce its will anywhere in the world, is an illusion of governmental knowledge and omnipotence that each day’s headline lets us know is sadly out of date. The agency opened the doors of its Langley, Va., headquarters to an apparently unprecedented extent for “Patriot Games,” and no one seeing the finished film will have to wonder why.

‘Patriot Games’

Harrison Ford: Jack Ryan

Anne Archer: Cathy Ryan

Patrick Bergin: Kevin O’Donnell

Sean Bean: Sean Miller

Thora Birch: Sally Ryan

James Fox: Lord Holmes

Samuel L. Jackson: Robby

Released by Paramount Pictures. Director Phillip Noyce. Producers Mace Neufeld and Robert Rehme. Executive producer Charles H. Maguire. Screenplay W. Peter Iliff and Donald Stewart, based on the novel by Tom Clancy. Cinematographer Donald McAlpine. Editor Meo; Travis, William Hoy. Costumes Norma Moriceau. Music James Horner. Production design Joseph Nemec III. Art director Joseph P. Lucky. Set decorator John M. Dwyer. Running time: 1 hour, 57 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (violence, sexuality, language).