Saturday, June 13, 2009

Red McCombs, Meet Red October

The Hunt for Red October (1990)
directed by John McTiernan
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from the Albuquerque Public Library

As refreshing as it is to see Alec Baldwin playing something other than a barking dog, Red October is the first of two disappointments I experienced upon revisiting some old favorites with Syl. The movie itself is as “sturdy” as it’s always been (the same way you might describe a model home), as far as action-oriented exercises in flag-waving paranoia go, but the inexplicable shortcuts that big-budget directors sometimes take on their way to the box office really cut into the heart of these projects over time. Why, for example, would anyone put such a fake-looking beard on Jeffrey Jones? Why would you film the movie’s last scene – which is supposed to take place along a river in Maine – against a blue screen (or were they green back then)? Red October is mostly helped by the recognizability of even its lowliest cast member, but everything I thought was invigorating the first time – and no, I don’t need anyone to remind me of my recent Star Trek review - is more along the lines of pleasantly silly now, clear to the better-bearded Scottish captain of a Russian sub, playing Henry Jones, playing old James Bond, playing that laughing drunk taking too much time on the sixteenth hole at St. Andrew’s with his sturdy trunk of a brogue.