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Patriot Games
Patriot Games Promotional Poster
Directed by	Phillip Noyce
Produced by	Mace Neufeld Robert Rehme
Written by	Tom Clancy (novel) W. Peter Iliff Donald Stewart
Starring	Harrison Ford Anne Archer Patrick Bergin Sean Bean Thora Birch James Fox Richard Harris Samuel L. Jackson and James Earl Jones
Music by	James Horner
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	June 5, 1992 (U.S. release)
Running time	117 min
Language	English
Budget	$45,000,000 (estimated)
Preceded by	The Hunt for Red October
Followed by	Clear and Present Danger
IMDb profile

Patriot Games is a film based on the novel of the same name by Tom Clancy. It was released on June 5, 1992 and directed by Phillip Noyce. In the movie, Jack Ryan was played by Harrison Ford and Jack's doctor-wife, Cathy Muller Ryan, by Anne Archer.

Contents 1 Plot summary 2 Differences between the film and the novel 2.1 Analysis & criticism 2.2 Cast 3 Trivia 4 External links

Jack Ryan is on a "working vacation" in London with his family, after having retired from the CIA (at about 30). Here they witness an attack on Lord William Holmes, British Secretary of State of Northern Ireland and a member of the British Royal Family. Ryan intervenes in the attack and kills one of the terrorists and also incapitates Sean Miller, one of the attackers. Ryan is wounded in the process but testifies in court against Miller, who is part of a breakaway group of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA). The breakaway group—the Ulster Liberation Army (ULA)—is unmentioned in the movie but is named in the book. Ryan is awarded a knighthood—a KCVO: Knight Commander of the Victorian Order—and eventually returns to the United States.

While being transferred to Albany Prison on the Isle of Wight, Miller's escort convoy is ambushed by ULA terrorists who kill the police officers, and he escapes from custody. He is tracked to Libya, where a number of terrorist training camps have operated for years, with the tacit support of the Muammar Qaddafi regime. He unexpectedly goes to the United States with his team to kill Ryan, who killed his brother during the London attack. Miller also tries to launch a killing on the Ryans, which proves unsuccessful.

After the attempt on their lives, Ryan decides to join the CIA again, having earlier rejected the appeal of his former superior, Admiral James Greer, to rejoin the agency. Their research and work eventually leads to an ambush on the terrorists' camp in North Africa, though Miller is not there.

The ambush on the Ryan household takes place, despite tight security as Lord Holmes visits them. Miller, enraged with anger and revenge on his brother's death, kills his team members as they try to turn their boat back to where Lord Holmes and the Ryans' (except Jack Ryan) who are hiding on shore. Ryan fights hand to hand, and Miller is killed when he falls backward onto a boat anchor and its prongs penetrate his back and emerge through the chest.

Credits roll just before Catherine Ryan learns the sex of the child she is going to have—and before she tells Jack and Sally; the audience will learn the baby is a boy in Clear and Present Danger.

• The novel explains how Jack Ryan is able to retire from the CIA after working for it only a short time: he has worked at Merrill Lynch and made millions of dollars investing on his own account. In the process, he has met and married Catherine Muller, his boss's daughter. Joe Muller makes a brief oafish appearance in the novel, which makes Jack's reasons for leaving Wall Street fairly obvious. The book also explains why the Agency wanted Jack back: he had written a report called "Agents and Agencies," which had identified the Ulster Liberation Army as a potential threat, long before meeting any ULA members in person. (Ryan was working at CIA headquarters but officially an employee of Mitre Corporation, which often serves as a CIA "front." The movie makes it obvious that Jack is wealthy but never explains why; it never mentions the ULA or Ryan's work for the Agency, although Sean Miller's defense attorney asks a pointed question at the end of his questioning: "Are you still a paid employee of the Central Intelligence Agency?" Ryan replies "No," which is true but uninformative. The book explains what the film does not.
• In the novel, the targets of the assassination attempt in London are the Prince and Princess of Wales (who are not named, although by 1987, hardly anyone had managed to avoid hearing about Prince Charles and Princess Diana). In the film, the target is the fictional Lord Holmes, a cousin of the Queen Mother and Minister of State for Northern Ireland.

• In the novel, the terrorist that Jack kills during the original attack was not Sean Miller's brother: he was a "very bad boy" that the ULA had broken out of prison. Therefore, Miller's desire for revenge against Ryan and his family was due to the failure of the mission (he hadn't failed before that one), as well as the political goal of attaching blame for the subsequent attack on the Ryan family at the feet of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA). In the film, Miller's motive became pure revenge.

• In the novel, Inspector Highland rescues Miller from rapists in prison and is shot in the abdomen after Miller gets free, leaving crippled but alive. In the film, Miller is slapped by another cop (not raped by prisoners) and fatally shoots Highland in the head, without a clear motive for yet another murder.

• Annette, the terrorist in the red wig that Ryan remembers seeing at the original attack in London, is not featured as such in the novel. Annette could perhaps be an amalgamation of two characters, Maureen Dwyer, a master bomb-maker for the PIRA who was arrested after an anonymous tip by the ULA, and Francoise Theroux, an assassin working with the French terrorist group Action-Directe. Dwyer was caught with a suitcase full of theatrical makeup and wigs, and Theroux was photographed via satellite at one of the training camps in Libya wearing a top that showed off breast cleavage.

• Dennis Cooley is not killed by Miller in the Libyan desert, but rather joins the team for the final assault on the Ryan home during the climax of the novel. Cooley is killed by Miller before the terrorists get on the boat to leave Peregrine Cliff.

• Jack is not attacked after leaving the Naval Academy. His attacker is arrested by two observant Marine guards before he could do any harm. In the film, Jack gets in a fist-fight and shoots him, then asks him where Miller is. In the book, the assailant doesn't answer because he isn't intelligent enough to be intimidated by the FBI or the Marines; in the film, he doesn't answer because he's dead. In the book, Jack hears about his wife's crash while he's at the academy, and Robbie Jackson takes him to the hospital in his red Corvette, racing in jet-pilot fashion. Jack and Robbie stay in a Holiday Inn while waiting for Sally's test results, and Jackson's wife, Cecilia, stays home. She is first seen at Sally's homecoming.

• The injuries sustained by Cathy—but especially Sally Ryan—appear downplayed in the film version. In the novel, she hadn't worn her seatbelt at the moment of impact and therefore was in critical condition when she arrived at the hospital. Her injuries included a fractured fibula and tibia of both legs and femur of the left leg. Six ribs on the right side, and all the ribs on the left side, were also broken, causing a flail chest, which required a respirator to allow her to breathe. There was some mild head trauma in the form of a concussion, but not intercranial bleeding; but the torso took the brunt of the impact. As a result, her internal injuries were the most life threatening, with extensive damage to the liver, spleen, and large bowel. The massive hemorrhaging caused her heart to stop at least once. Surgeons removed her spleen (as in the film), but also 1/4 of the liver, and about 30 cm of her large bowel. The most life-threatening of all the injuries was to her liver: this was why Ryan needed to wait until Dr Shapiro gave him the liver-function-test results before he could leave the hospital and begin to relax.

• In the book, Sean Miller does not call Jack and goad him about his daughter losing her spleen.

• Jack does not speak to Paddy O'Neill at the Patriot's Club and threaten to cut off his funding unless he gives up Sean Miller, nor does Paddy O'Neill give over "the British girl" in a bit of irony, since Annette is not in the novel. The PIRA's funding is cut off another way: The PIRA is blamed for the ULA's actions, and its admirers become sceptical—in particular, the owner of the Patriot's Club, whose brother, an FBI agent, shows him photos of Sally Ryan in intensive care. After the Patriot's Club declares Paddy O'Neil persona non grata, the PIRA's fund-raising comes to a halt.
• The novel describes a long battle between DSS security personnel and the ULA terrorists attacking Peregrine Cliff. The movie shows one DSS agent inside the house and a few bodies and a dead radio outside—and shows Geoffrey Watkins using a silenced pistol to kill a DSS agent before turning off the house's electric power. Somehow, Jack entertains his guests in quiet tranquillity, not hearing any helicopters or automatic-weapons fire outside.
• There is a group of African-American revolutionaries in the U.S. that provide advanced scouting and logistical support to the ULA for both of their missions on U.S. soil: one of them works for Maryland Power and Light and cuts off power to the Ryan house (by tampering with a transormer), which is more credible than Watkins' killing a DSG agent and throwing a switch in the basement. This group is essentially non-existent in the film.
• Watkins comes to a different end: in the novel, he stays in London, discovers that Cooley's cover has been blown when he gets Cooley's coded distress call, and kills himself just before the Special Branch come to arrest him: one officer (and possibly Clancy) remarks that the traitor is now "answering to a higher authority." In the movie, he accompanies the Royals to the Ryan house, kills a guard, cuts off the power, is tortured by Ryan (who shoots his kneecap after Watkins refuses to say how many of his confederates are coming), and is hit on the head (either knocked out or killed) by Lord Holmes when he calls out to his ULA cohorts. Curiously, in the film, the DSS agent pulls out a semiautomatic pistol before going into the basement; Watkins, behind him, pulls out a pistol with a silencer and shoots the agent. In practice, Lord Holmes' Personal Private Secretary would not be authorized to carry a weapon of any kind—let alone a silenced one. In the U.K., even police officers rarely carry guns.
• The attack by a special-operations commando unit on one of the camps in the North African desert that is viewed in real-time via satellite (in the movie) is (in the book) a French DGSE team sent in to eliminate the camp containing Françoise Theroux and her Action-Directe accomplices. A follow-up attack by the same French commando team is planned and partially executed for the camp suspected to contain Miller and the rest of the ULA members, but a roving Libyan military unit prevents it from continuing. The film portrays the unit as a British SAS team attacking the camp that Miller and the ULA are suspected of being at after the CIA views satellite photos of individuals matching the description of Dennis Cooley and Annette: by the time the bodies in the camp can be identified, the ULA has attacked Ryan's house. There is a contradiction here: if the SAS had gone in and out in two minutes, killing everyone there, they couldn't have recovered any bodies to identify, or even photographed them. It is impossible to "verify dental records" if one doesn't have a body with teeth in it. The SAS would have left them behind or spent a long time there. On the live TV coverage, we don't see them hesitate.
• The climactic plan of the novel had three components. First, to lure the police into thinking that the threat was far away from the Ryan household. Second, to attack the Ryan household, kill the Ryans, and capture the Prince and Princess of Wales. Finally, to perform coordinated assassinations of key PIRA political and military leaders in Ireland, thereby supplanting its establishment and making the ULA the dominant force of the future. In the film, there was no first phase at all and the assassinations took place earlier in the film, with some of them performed by Annette (an homage to the Françoise Theroux character).
• During the climactic attack on the Ryan home on Peregrine Cliff, the escape from the house is done differently in the novel, where everyone escapes using one of the ULA's 20-ft boats that are anchored at the base of the cliff. They all escape to the Naval Academy, where the women and Sally are taken into protective custody by the Marines, while Jack and the others and a smll number of Marines and midshipmen on an Academy yard-patrol (YP) boat (commanded by a female CPO, Mary Znamirovsky) are able to capture Miller and his ULA cronies on board a Maltese freighter; The Prince makes himself useful as a radar operator on the YP boat. While the film shows a pitched battle of life and death between Jack and Miller aboard one of the 20-footers, the novel ends with Miller surviving and being arrested aboard the freighter. However, Jack Ryan comes very close to murdering Miller in cold blood, only to be stopped by an understanding Marine Gunnery Sergeant: "He's not worth it, Jack."
• During the novel the reader already knows that Cathy is pregnant with a boy, as opposed to the cliff-hanger ending of the film. Also, at the end of the novel, Cathy gives birth in the Dispensary at the Naval Academy, with Jack at her side and fresh from seeing Miller and the ULA taken into custody.

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One facet of the film that drew a lot of attention at the time of its release was the inclusion of breathtaking real-time infrared reconnaissance satellite video of SAS special forces troops raiding terrorist training camps. Such satellites did not have the capability at the time, but in an example of Hollywood presenting new technological ideas, this capability is rumored to have been included in newer satellites. Also interestingly, the terrorists use synchronized digital watches to know at what times they may appear in the open of their camps, lest a satellite see them. Such watches are a common consumer product now.

Criticism of the film in retrospect has identified many weak spots in the plot, and in some ways it is the weakest of the Jack Ryan films in terms of coherency at critical points—for instance, the motivations of Sean Miller for attacking the Royal party are never explained, and the distance that Jack is kept from the Throne is also puzzling: in the book, Jack's family stay at Buckingham Palace, and the Queen acts like his mother.^{[citation needed]} In fact, it is utterly unthinkable that a close relative of the Royal Family could serve in a British Cabinet, since this would be seen as compromising the political neutrality of the Crown. This would apply particularly to a sensitive Cabinet position such as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland; direct identification of the Royal Family with controversial security policies could be very politically damaging.

Other political criticisms of the film (from different sources) include the following:

• The terrorists are presented as members of a Marxist splinter group (possibly modeled on the Irish National Liberation Army) rather than the Provisional IRA. Some critics hostile to the IRA claim that this represents an attempt to apease potential IRA sympathisers among the audience by presenting the IRA as a legitimate nationalist organisation distinct from unacceptable Marxist revolutionaries. (Against this, it can be argued that the film's portrayal of the IRA contains uncomplimentary elements; IRA members are seen trying to kill a rival by luring him to phony peace talks and equivocating so that they can pretend they have not really collaborated with the authorities, when this is clearly the case: a senior IRA member is also portrayed as a sanctimonious hypocrite who hides his wedding ring before picking up a woman in a bar, then takes her to a room upstairs; she promptly shoots him as soon as his clothes are off, after pretending to look for a condom in her purse.) This movie offered a snapshot of the Western European political climates and burning issues in the early 1990s after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was made a few years after the novel was published, so some changes could be expected.

• Harrison Ford - Jack Ryan
• Anne Archer - Dr. Catherine "Cathy" Ryan
• Patrick Bergin - Kevin O'Donnell
• Sean Bean - Sean Miller
• Thora Birch - Sally Ryan
• James Fox - Lord William Holmes
• Ellen Geer - Mary Pat Foley
• Samuel L. Jackson - Lieutenant Commander Robby Jackson
• Polly Walker - Annette
• J. E. Freeman - Marty Cantor
• James Earl Jones - Admiral James Greer
• Richard Harris - Paddy O'Neil
• Alex Norton - Dennis Cooley
• Hugh Fraser - Geoffrey Watkins
• David Threlfall - Inspector Robert Highland
• Alun Armstrong - Sergeant Owens

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

• Three people in this film have appeared in Star Wars movies. Harrison Ford played Han Solo in Episodes 4-6; Samuel L. Jackson played Mace Windu in Episodes 1-3 and James Earl Jones as the voice of Darth Vader in Episodes 3-6.

• Sean Bean has a scar over his eye given to him by Harrison Ford while shooting his death scene. Ford accidentally hit him with a boat hook. In Sean Bean's Sharpe series, this was emphasized with makeup to add credibility to his character.

• The skyscrapers shown in Annapolis are fictitious. During the highway chase, Jack tells Cathy to meet him at the state police barracks on Houston Street. There is no such street in Annapolis or its suburbs.

• The actors to originally play Jack and Carolyn Ryan in The Hunt for Red October, Alec Baldwin and Gates McFadden, were unavailable due to other commitments and were recast for Patriot Games. Baldwin was performing A Midsummer Night's Dream on Broadway and McFadden was a regular on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation (produced by Paramount's television division).

• Despite the film's plot and setting, Richard Harris and Patrick Bergin are the only Irish actors to appear in the film.

• The music video that Patrick Bergin's character Kevin O'Donnell watches during the scene where the Provisional IRA tries to kill him is for Clannad's song "Theme from Harry's Game", originally made for an ITV drama about The Troubles in 1982. When the song was included on Patriot Games soundtrack in 1992, it helped jump-start Clannad's popularity in the U.S.

• Toward the end of the film, a list of "girl" and "boy" names is shown on the Ryan refrigerator. A close inspection of the list reveals that the first two girl names listed are "Samuel" and "Jackson."

• Title was parodied in an episode of Family Guy of the same name

• Writer Tom Clancy distances himself from the movie because there are too many plot changes.

• Some scenes from the movie taking place at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, were actually filmed on site. Patriot Games was the first movie to accomplish this.

• Horner's score for the film contains musical references to works by Aram Khachaturian (Adagio from "Gayane" Suite) and Dmitri Shostakovich (Symphony No. 5, 3rd mvt.). One particular sequence in the music accompanying the scene in which Ryan, Greer, et al view the live satellite feed of the SAS attack contains a nearly direct sampling from the latter.

• Patriot Games at the Internet Movie Database

Jack Ryan films

Alec Baldwin: The Hunt for Red October

Harrison Ford: Patriot Games | Clear and Present Danger

Ben Affleck: The Sum of All Fears