John McTiernan’s Tom Clancy adaptation The Hunt For Red October (1990) is a “dad movie”. It’s the kind of film that you watch with your dad when you’re out sick or home from school. I first saw this film with my dad when I was about seven years old. When I was in college I bonded with my friend John over our experiences watching The Hunt For Red October with our fathers as kids. While we were supposed to be working on our 3D Art project we opted instead to indulge in the fanciful thrills of Jack Ryan.
What remains attractive about The Hunt For Red October is McTiernan’s taut pacing. There aren’t a lot of action packed set-pieces but there is plenty of suspense as Jack Ryan rushes to the aid of a defecting Soviet submarine captain. The Hunt For Red October is a film comprised mostly of sweaty guys debating with each other in cramped quarters. That McTiernan can imbue his material with so much dramatic urgency is a testament to his directing capabilities.
But surely there could never be a The Hunt For Red October is there wasn’t already a Das Boot (1981). Das Boot, like The Hunt For Red October, was a film my father adored and that he shared with me eagerly when I was a boy. McTiernan takes his cues from Das Boot in how he stages the undersea battles between submarines. There is a stoic sense of honor in the two films as well that has its root in John Ford’s WWII pictures. These are films about honorable men waging war on corrupt ideologies that fly in the face of their moral codes. These are films that fathers show their sons to inspire them to be men.
I imagine that if I came to The Hunt For Red October as an adult that the film would hardly have the impact it had on me as a boy. I am not of my father’s generation and his preoccupation with masculine identity and morality is something I have always been critical of. The films that McTiernan made that I love, Predator (1987) and The Last Action Hero (1993), dismantle the types of masculinist heroes that my father admired so much. The Hunt For Red October only means anything because it meant something to my father.
