Starting with John McTiernan’s submarine based cold-war thriller The Hunt for Red October released in 1990, followed by Philip Noyce’s Patriot Games in 1992 and Clear and Present Danger in 1994 before Phil Alden Robinson’s The Sum of All Fears attempted to reboot the franchise in 2002, the quality of the four films varied significantly with Clear and Present Danger being the series’ zenith and the preposterous naiveté of Patriot Games and the muddled background of The Sum of All Fears representing the nadir. The central characters of Doctors Jack and Cathy Ryan were frequently re-cast, being played respectively by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, Gates McFadden, Anne Archer and Bridget Moynahan. The series has a very loose sense of continuity, the distinctions between The Hunt for Red October and Patriot Games for example are very clear, the former being set 1984 and the latter being set in 1992 yet Ryan’s daughter seems not to have aged more than a couple of years. The most radical departure came in The Sum of All Fears where the producers decided to reset the franchise in a way akin to Casino Royale, Star Trek and Batman Begins, setting the film in 2002 but with a much younger Ryan in the middle of the action. The plots of the four films also differ quite substantially, moving from the Cold War to the Troubles in Northern Ireland to Colombian drug cartels to Neo Nazis. The character of Ryan appears to be the only unifying factor, but perhaps there is also unity to be found in their politics? Clancy’s own political persuasions appear to be centre-right within the USA, he is a conservative and over the years has donated large sums of money to Republican candidates and even dedicated some of his novels to high profile Republicans. Clancy, a commentator of some merit on both domestic and foreign policy, famously allocated some of the blame for the 9/11 attacks to the Democrats for cutbacks made to the Intelligence community’s resources. But he was critical of the Bush administration, and in particular Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and a vocal defender of Islam in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. An educated man with a passion for American Navy history whose own application to serve was denied when he failed an eye exam, his thoroughly-researched plotting and chillingly prescient scenarios are so highly regarded by US military and intelligence agencies that he has been invited to lecture at the Pentagon on several occasions, and the Department of Defence regularly offer Clancy un-classified background briefings on pending weapons projects. However, despite the weight that these factors lend his credibility, the politics of his own work are generally quite simplistic. The character of Ryan represents the archetypal ‘Everyman’ whose politics are largely neutral but sees the world in terms of moral absolutes, and through him Clancy chooses to filter both his own stance on a variety of conflicts and his technical expertise, creating little more than a well-informed celebration of those who uphold the law and defend the people.
To summarise, we can see a clear running trend within the Jack Ryan series from first to last. That trend is a generally congratulatory portrayal of the Intelligence fraternity, at least as far as those who are ultimately charged with the responsibility of ensuring the country’s bidding is done, usually exemplified by Ryan himself. The CIA is shown, for the most part, in a positive light until the politicians or those with political aspirations step in on the decision-making process. Whether it be facing his own American military, the Russian Navy, Irish terrorists and their British enablers, Colombian drug empires, those walking the corridors of power in the White House, new Russian leaders or Neo Nazis, Ryan is uniformly correct and forthright in his relentless dissemination of right and wrong. And what is right and wrong in the world of Jack Ryan? Right is accepting that your enemies sometimes hide in plain sight, right is accepting that even your own leaders may be wrong, right is never letting criminals get away with their misdeeds. Wrong is making assumptions about people based on nothing more than their nationality, wrong is allowing murderers to commit their crimes, wrong is launching wars for political gain, wrong is being blinded by vengeance. In Clancy’s world it doesn’t matter who the enemy is or whether the US sympathises with them or not. In Clear and Present Danger, Ritter insults Ryan calling him a “boy scout” and criticises him for seeing the world in “black and white”. To this, Ryan rebukes his claim, “no, not black and white, right and wrong!” This statement would appear to be Clancy’s own personal mantra, the bottom line against which all actions and orders must be tested. Is the world this simple? Of course it isn’t, but it is for Jack Ryan and it certainly appears to be for Clancy and the filmmakers who have translated his books to the silver screen. The individual is paramount; men are to be judged by their own actions not the actions of their nation or government. Is the individual right or wrong? In this world, only Tom Clancy can decide. M.Dawson |
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Tom Clancy is one of the most high-profile literary figures in the US, an author that most people are familiar with regardless of whether or not they may actually have read one of his best-selling novels. Noted for the exhaustive breadth of his books’ technical prowess and militaristic know-how, he is to the political thriller what John Grisham is to the courtroom drama; they both deal in gripping stories of dramatic and sensational content but rarely tip the balance into ludicrous extremes. He is most famous for his popular Jack Ryan series, which followed the exploits of a heroic CIA operative, a number of which have been adapted for the screen.
So with this in mind let us examine the first of these films, The Hunt for Red October, in which a new silent propulsion Soviet submarine is stolen by it’s commander, Captain Ramius (as played by Sean Connery), Ramius is planning to defect to the West but the American’s are not sure of his intentions and fear that he may simply have gone insane and is about to attack the US with the submarine’s impressive nuclear arsenal. Only Jack Ryan is certain about Ramius’ intentions, but Ramius in over his head and has to battle against his own people and evade the fleet of soviet vessels which have been despatched to sink the rogue sub. So the conflict at hand is the Cold War and this is about as action based as a Cold War movie could possibly be with the usual attention to technical detail that Clancy endows his stories with. The political interest in this film and indeed the novel is that Ramius and his senior officers are given so much screen time and are portrayed as honest men who desire a life away from the Soviet Union, they are not brainwashed evil Russians, but rather rounded human beings with personal agendas. Not all of them hold the full strength of their convictions either and some doubt their mission as it progresses. Only Ramius and his second in command Borodin (played by Sam Neil) seem absolutely certain of what they’re doing. A positive portrayal of senior Soviet military figures seems at odds with the American propaganda at the time (although we’re far enough away from McCarthism, there is still a thriving suspicion of all things Red in the US). On the surface, Clancy appears to be empathising with the enemy in The Hunt for Red October, a very humanist approach which is not normally associated with conservative thinking. However there are caveats, firstly it is revealed early on that Ramius is not actually Russian but is in fact Lithuanian by birth, given the age of the character we can assume that he was born at time when Lithuania was free of Soviet rule before World War II when the country was annexed. As with most nationals of the Baltic States their loyalty was first and foremost to their own nation, the desire for freedom was potent in most of the former Soviet Union. This automatically makes Ramius more sympathetic to the American military and is in fact one of the only reasons that they entertain Ryan’s theory that he’s attempting to defect. As a Lithuanian Ramius becomes a proud Patriot who is sick of Russian tyranny rather than a Russian who wants a better world; it is a crucial distinction. There is also the matter of Captain Tupolev (played by Stella Skarsgard) a Russian submarine captain who is sent to destroy the Red October, he is the stereotypical evil Russian who smokes in every scene, violently shouts and is generally angry, belligerent and arrogant. He offsets the so-called “good” Soviets with a particular brand of Russian caricaturing. Here Clancy seems to be reassuring the audience and the reader that the officers aboard The Red October are the exception rather than the rule. Another interpretation of Clancy’s motives is that he values the individual over the system, the system is corrupt and evil but the individuals make there own way and are wholly redeemable. Again this doesn’t chime well with the common perceptions of conservatism, that all those to the right of the political spectrum will judge nations and civilisations as a whole rather than on an individual basis.
Patriot Games moved the focus to the Northern Ireland troubles and operated within a revenge movie framework as terrorist Sean Miller (played by Sean Bean) wants retribution for the death of his younger brother at the hands of Ryan during a botched attempt on a member of the Royal Family’s life. Arguably the most personal of the four films, here Ryan is attacking on his own volition and has resigned from the intelligence fraternity, (although the novel is actually set earlier in Ryan’s career before he’s even become an analyst for the CIA) Ryan is holidaying in London and attacks the terrorists because they “made him mad” as he recalls later in the film. It is a delicate subject in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, but is also a delicate subject for the United States as well, as Irish-American groups are responsible for the bulk of the IRA and Sinn Fien funding, without the financial help received from the USA the IRA would not have been able to organise so many terrorist attacks. Post 9/11 and the situation changed somewhat, American’s could no-longer sponsor terrorism in Ireland so easily as it would pave the way for charges of hypocrisy. Post 9/11 and Britain’s support in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq mean that the US view of Britain has also changed significantly, the once continually negative portrayals of this country and the almost ritualistic casting of British actors as villains in Hollywood films has diminished almost entirely with the likes of Jason Statham and Clive Owen now allowed to take leading men roles in major American productions instead of being continually relegated to supporting or antagonistic characters. But Patriot Games is something of a pre-9/11 anomaly, the British characters for the most part are portrayed rather positively and the Irish for the most part are portrayed as violent murderous thugs. It is a somewhat cartoonish portrayal of The Troubles with English people working for the terrorists and Irish cops in London just so that we know that neither side is all good or all bad. Of course these instances are ridiculously unrealistic and as such are highly transparent. In general the English are seen as innocent victims of terror and the Irish are portrayed as irrational blood-thirsty mercenaries - this is highly unusual for an American film. But once again there are caveats, firstly both Clancy and the film makers are very careful not to blame the IRA for the violence that ensues in this film, not only that but a senior IRA figure at one point helps Ryan to find the terrorists he’s after. Miller and the rest of the villains actually belong to an extreme break-away group of the IRA. In fairness to the author and the film makers, this is not so far fetched as the IRA usually warned the police when they were about to bomb a civilian area and would usually not condone the deaths of innocent men and women; also members of the IRA were prone to breaking away from the centre and forming their own groups. The so-called “Real IRA” for example who committed the single worst terrorist atrocity in Northern Ireland in 1998 when they exploded a bomb in Omagh killing twenty-nine men, women and children. Clancy and the film makers avoided criticising the IRA too viciously and effectively allocate the blame for the films horrendous acts of violence to a group of extremists. This acts as a get-out clause for the film makers, were they to be attacked for their portrayal of Irish terrorism, and attacked they were… As with The Hunt for Red October, the blame is shifted from the systems and the situation to the individual, Miller doesn’t represent the IRA or the struggle for Irish independence, he is his own man and is blinded by rage to the point where he’ll kill his own people if they get in the way of his vendetta. Miller isn’t even the leader of the extremist gang, he’s third in command and his superior indulges his vengeance for a time but later becomes increasingly fed up with Miller’s narrow minded approach, even within the extremist branch of the IRA the majority of the members can see reason – except Miller.
In Clear and Present Danger, a friend of the President of the United States is killed on the orders of a Colombian drug lord. The President takes this personally and orders a covert operation to hurt the drug lords down in their own back yards, a military unit is sent in to destroy cocaine supplies and kill the people in charge. The action is illegal and the funds from the Congressional Oversight Committee were illegally drawn. The President’s actions are motivated in part by revenge and in part by a desire to be re-elected, as the Deputy Director of Operations Robert Ritter states: “we want what any first term administration wants, a second term”. Noyce’s film and Clancy’s story almost perfectly capture the George W. Bush Administration years before Bush Jr would even run for office. The self-serving nature of this fictional government and its willingness to commit mass murder (which even extends to children) for ultimately nothing more than personal satisfaction and political success reminds us of those years when Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld ran the show, and it reminds us of the spurious reasoning that was associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom. Of course when Clear and Present Danger was filmed and when the original book was written (in 1989) we can automatically discount this as artistic intent, but this is not to discount the similarities altogether, as with so many films of years past, they can grow with potency as time passes. Clear and Present Danger was possibly inspired by the years of Richard Nixon, American’s other highly unpopular president who also acted duplicitously in the name of state security, but also possibly the Iran-Contra affair which was much closer to the time of the novel being published. The duality of the United States government has always provided an interesting political backdrop, when the executive belongs to one party but the legislative belongs to another there will always be a conflict of interests. In the film the party the President belongs to is never made explicit, rendering the politics of Clear and Present Danger mutable, it is neither about the Democrats or the Republicans, it is not brave enough to take sides and as a result parallels can be drawn to a number of US administrations, Nixon’s, Regan’s, Clinton’s and Bush Jr’s. The attempted cover-up and the self-serving nature of the President perhaps remind of Nixon the most, but the actual crime itself reminds more of Bush Jr. As with the other Jack Ryan films Clear and Present Danger skates over bold political statements, an accidental by-product of this safer approach is the film indeterministic nature, allowing multiple interpretations depending on your political persuasion. As always Jack Ryan is a beacon of moral strength and certainty, but even Ryan remains politically neutral, we never learn what his politics are; all we know is that he values truth and justice above personal gain. The film is however unashamedly pro-military with all the US soldiers portrayed as heroic pawns in the evil American governments nasty little game of chess. They are manipulated and eventually abandoned by the government and from the film makers view they were simply following orders. 
The latest film in the series, The Sum of All Fears suffers the most in terms of re-writing Clancy’s political outlook. In the film a group of Neo-Nazi’s detonate a nuclear bomb in Baltimore, which along with other events in Europe, lead the United States government to believe that the Russian’s were responsible for the attack. The hope is to provoke an all out war between East and West and allow the enemies of these Nazi’s to destroy each other. However in the original novel the plan was hatched by a group of Islamic Extremists with far clearer goals and motives. The films producers changed this part of the story as so not to be accused of racism, given the Caucasian nature of Neo-Nazi’s they are the Hollywood producers villain of choice, they’re both “white” and “evil” and so deriding them will never offend anyone of significance. Of course this somewhat damages the films credibly and post 9/11 Clancy’s novel no longer seems so far fetched. In both the film and the novel however Ryan manages to prevent nuclear war by convincing the Kremlin to stand down rather than the President of the United States who he is unable to convince. The newly appointed Russian leader is portrayed as a lenient and thoughtful man in a difficult position, he can’t appear weak to those who’d so quickly take his place or he might soon find himself arrested or worse, but likewise he must do everything possible to prevent war. The US President on the other hand also shows regret for what he’s about to do, “is this my administration?” he asks before authorising a nuclear strike on Russia, clearly he is mindful that this will be what he’s remembered for and it is not a light undertaking on his part. In both book and film neither the Russians or the Americans are the villains, they are continued victims of their own suspicions and circumstances but neither side is particularly malevolent. It is the terrorists or the Neo Nazi’s who are the true enemies of page and screen, within the novel the identity of the terrorists has some relevance within the real world, within the film the Neo Nazi’s are pure fantasy and have next to no political relevance as they do not represent any real power base in the current global community. The Sum of All Fears is the least political of all the Jack Ryan films because it does not operate within a relevant political framework. The picture was nearly shelved completely and for a time was deemed “unrealisable” as it was produced before the events of 9/11 and for obvious reasons had its release postponed for a time because of heightened sensitivity. Not so long later and it would actually become fashionable to show the USA devastated by nuclear weapons, with Terminator 3, 24 seasons two and six, Jericho and others showing no remorse when it comes to the use of nuclear weapons in their films. But the loss of life and the horrors of nuclear war are only breezed past in the film as are most of the more interesting thematic concepts. By 2002 an anti-nuclear war message had become something of a repeated point as many films from the 1950’s onwards warned of the dangers of nuclear weapons. To counter this point though, it is one of the few major Hollywood films to depict a foreign terrorist strike on American soil, it could be a forewarning of the events of 9/11 with the usual Clancy cartoonish appraisal of the situation, but once again war is prevented by reason and negotiation, a fairly unrealistic conclusion as we all know what happened after 9/11 – not just one war, but two wars. The realism of Clancy’s novels lessened over time with one of his later books, Debt of Honour, featuring an extremist Japanese government killing most of the American government and leaving Jack Ryan as the president of the United States, most of the books narrative takes place beyond the scope of contemporary events, the narrative apparatus appears more akin to a Science Fiction novel than espionage thriller, so perhaps Clancy himself was moving further away from politically relevant environments and closer to fantastical speculation and “what if” scenarios.
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