The Jack Ryan Collection
Movie: 3.5/5
Video: :3.5/5
Audio: 4/5
Extras: 2/5
Overall Score:69
Tom Clancy has made a huge career off of his extremely detailed and sometimes extremely technical military dramas. The “Jack Ryan” character has become one of his most famous, and most popular in the film world as well. “The Hunt For Red October” was the start of the Jack Ryan craze and, in my opinion, the best one. Ironically Paramount decided to let go of Alec Baldwin as Jack Ryan because of monetary disputes and instead hire Harrison Ford….for even more money. Ford played the character of Jack Ryan with a bit more aggressiveness than he was portrayed by Alec or even Tom Clancy’s novels himself, but the fans ate it up. Harrison Ford has that sort of charisma and charm that made him such a popular Icon. Then we finally have the nail in the coffin of the Jack Ryan saga. Ben Affleck playing our favorite CIA analyst. It actually wasn’t a bad representation at all, but back then Affleck was not nearly as mature an actor and his character came across as the sore thumb in the series.
4/5
“The Hunt for Red October” is a thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seats. It seems that the soviets have created a revolutionary silent propulsion system for their submarines. This “caterpillar” drive is virtually silent and undetectable by sonar. As you can well imagine this leaves the U.S. at a disadvantage in tracking vessels with said propulsion system. The U.S. military leaders learn of this new propulsion system on the same day that Captain Marko Ramius (Sean Connery) takes the “Red October” prototype out for a joyride. The Russian military leaders come to warn the U.S. that Ramius has gone rogue and that he intendeds to fire his nuclear missiles on the U.S. As plausible as this sounds, CIA analyst, Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) doesn’t agree with the consensus. He figures that Ramius is not the type to go rogue like this. Basing his evidence on a hunch and Ramius’ background he deduces that the “Red October” is not on an assault mission, but on a mission of Defection. Thus begins the race against time. The Race to FIND the “Red October” and see who is right… Jack Ryan… or the Russian Military leaders.
McTiernan has made countless action movies, but this was one of his first forays into a more subtle arena. Instead of balls to the walls action, ala “Predator” and “Die Hard” he creates another classic that is much higher on the suspense rather than action. The film never seems over the top ridiculous or bloated, but cruises along at a smooth pace, playing one side against the other, never revealing the hand until all the chips are on the table. It’s a tamer outing than McTiernan’s other outings, but it still proves that the man had a knack for good characters. The only flaw I had with the characters was Sean Connery’s constantly slipping Russian accent. Took me out of the picture every time.
3.5/5
“Patriot Games” upped the ante by creating a harsher and more action oriented Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford). Instead of the suspenseful PG fare of “The Hunt for Red October” we have a much harder R rating that gives Jack a bit more of the “in your face” characterizations. Here he’s in England with his family when a terrorist attack strikes. In the struggle Jack disarms one of the terrorists and ends up killing one other. While this makes him a hero in England, it leaves a hole in the life of the terrorist’s brother. It seems that the terrorist he shot was the younger brother of Sean Miller (Sean Bean), the same terrorist he ended up disarming during the incident. Making Jack and his family the next targets, Sean Miller pulls out the stops to try and destroy Jack’s life. Realizing that the only way he’s going to catch Sean is with the help of his old pals, Jack returns to Langley and employs the help of the CIA in catching this maniacal criminal.
“Patriot Games” was a bit rough around the edges and took the Jack Ryan character to a place that he wasn’t familiar with, turning him more into an action hero in some ways than most analysts would ever dream of. Harrison Ford had a good grasp of the character, but the real shining star here was Sean Bean. Playing the crazed Irish terrorist to the T he comes off totally believable as a man who’s lost everything that meant something to him and the only thing left in its stead was the soul sucking need for revenger.
4/5
Now that Harrison became the more popular Ryan we come back for one more outing as Jack Ryan. This time we’re dealing with Columbian drug lords in “Clear and Present Danger”. It seems that Jack Ryan is tasked with talking Congress into approving a bill that would give them funds to curb drug trafficking from the southern border. The only problem is that the left hand is doing something that the right hand knows nothing about. The President has authorized a covert ops mission against the Columbian drug lords in retaliation for a friend dying. While this is all well and good if nothing goes wrong, but as you can guess, something DOES go wrong. One of the Columbians escapes the bombing and takes what’s left of the U.S. black ops team hostage in his own plans for revenge. This of course, leaves Jack in a moral quandary. He’s between a rock and a hard place and now he’s got to decide where his loyalties lie. Does he blindly follow orders, or does he follow what he knows is constitutionally right. Leading a team of commandos BACK into the Columbian jungle to rescue the men that were left behind and disavowed, he must face the men who’ve made his life a hell. One of them, a drug lord who’s out for revenger and money, and the second is the President of the United states.
“Clear and Present Danger” is a little more polished than “Patriot Games”, Harrison still plays the character as gruff and no nonsense as ever, but the storytelling is smoother and doesn’t seem as cheaply made. It’s a bit tamer too with a PG-13 rating, but don’t let that fool you, it hovers just under that R rating that “Patriot Games” carried with it.
3/5
Now we have the final outing (that is until Chris Pine graces the screen) of the Jack Ryan saga. Instead of sticking with the source material, the directors and screen writers decided to go a bit off course. Instead of getting into the politics of the Russians and the U.S. over the nuclear materials, they keep the bare bones of the IDEA of Clancy’s book and just ran with it. Instead we now have Fascists who have taken control of nuclear material and have a bomb that they are using to try and play the Russians off against the U.S. As usual it’s up to Jack Ryan (Ben Affleck) to find out that it’s NOT the Russians fault and try and stop world war III before it starts.
Of all the people who I imagined playing Jack Ryan, Ben Affleck was not one of them. I really respect Affleck as a director and he has matured in his acting abilities 10 fold, but at this day and age Ben was NOT in his acting prime. Jack came across more as a stoner with Ben Affleck’s famed “one expression the entire movie” modes. Liev Schrieber helps as much as he can, but there’s not much he can do. However with Morgan Freeman playing a main character you can’t give up all hope. Pulling every last bit of acting ability he could the film coasted along as just “mediocre” instead of a downright snooze fest thanks to his down to earth portrayal as Jack’s mentor.
Rating:
See Individual Ratings
Video 3.5
Video wise these are the same discs as released individually here and have been reviewed to death. Solid 3.5/5 for video across the board with the best of the batch being “Hunt for Red October”. These were all early Paramount AVC encodes from the beginning of the format era when they were still mastered for HD DVD so there’s a lack of bitrate and some thick softness applied to them. Again “Hunt for Red October” comes out looking the best of the batch, with some nicely done black levels and a clarity that surpasses the rest
Audio4/5
Audio wise it’s a bit of a mixed bag. “Sum of All fears” and “Clear and Present Danger” are both rather mediocre to good with some decent effects. My only complaints are that there is some missing LFE in both and surround usage was marginal at best. Still a decent encode, just wish there was more to them. “Hunt for Red October” is excellent with some fantastic sounds, the pinging of Sonar is crystal clear and the sonic vibrations from the warheads light up the surrounds beautifully. The Best of the bunch actually is “Patriot Games” which gives a truly stunning presentation on Blu-ray. The auditory detail and precision are spot on and truly a joy to listen to. Overall all the tracks sound quite good, but “Patriot Games” is the stand out here.
Extras 2/5
The Hunt for Red October
• Feature Length Commentary
• Beneath the Surface
• Theatrical Trailer
Patriot Games
• Patriot Games Up Close
• Theatrical Trailer
Clear and Present Danger
• Behind the Danger
• Theatrical Trailer
Sum of All Fears
• Making of
• Visual Effects
• 2 Feature Length Commenarys
Overall: 3.5/5
Now all of this discussion leads up to one question. How is this different than the individual releases that Paramount released years ago? Well the answer is simply this.... a slip box. This collection not only includes the EXACT same encodes as the previously released single editions, but they include the same artwork and are individually shrink wrapped inside of a newly pressed slip box. in other words, if you already own the individual releases there is NOTHING new in this box set except for a cheap cardboard slipbox. Had there been a bonus disc with some extra content I could see the point in double dipping, but in reality this is nothing but a combined packaging for people who HAVEN'T picked up the individual releases. Overall it's not a bad boxset, but the price needs to come down a bit since there's no incentive to get the boxset over the already cheap individual releases besides keeping them in one location.
Additional Information:
Starring: Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, Morgan Freeman
Directed by: John McTiernan : Phillip Noyce : Phil Alden Robinson
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 AVC
Audio: English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1, French, Spanish DD 5.1
Studio: Paramount
Rated: PG, R, PG-13
Blu-Ray Release Date: Dec 3rd, 2013
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