Patriot Games (1992)

Director: Phillip Noyce

Cast: Harrison Ford, Anne Archer, Patrick Bergin, Sean Bean

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure. I can’t help but be a sucker for anything Jack Ryan related, as long as it comes from that era before Clancy started believing his own press, or worse yet, died.

Although, I do probably have deeper, more lasting memories of the score. As a young kid, I practically wore out the cassette I had of Horner’s music from this film, but then again all kids went through their phase where they listened to James Horner scores non-stop, right?

41-year-olds have the same thing, right?

Did I Like It: That last section covers a lot of ground for a proper review. The Horner score—one of his best—can propel through quite a bit. The story, too, has a simplicity to it that makes it easier to swallow than even The Hunt for Red October (1990) and Clear and Present Danger (1994). The less said about the later films in the series, the better, and definitely the less said about the doorstops books that never saw the light of the projection booth, the much, much better.

Ostensibly a sequel to Red October I can’t help but compare the apples and oranges of Baldwins and Fords*. Ford feels like the kind of guy that Clancy imagined when he was writing, but there’s something so anxious about Baldwin that gave Ryan an almost nebbish quality. That quality is all gone now.

Ultimately, this is a nice little thriller from that peak era of Harrison Ford’s peak thriller era in the 1990s. Although I’d probably watch The Fugitive (1993) or maybe Air Force One (1997)** before this. It’s the kind of movie that as a kid I imagined watching, because it was the kind of movie that grown ups watched.

*You won’t need to guess much where I stand on the eternal Anne Archer vs. the blink-and-you’ll-miss-her Gates McFadden debate.

**Could you imagine if Ford continued with the role? Things could have gotten real weird, real convoluted, and more than a little prophetic. Seriously, go read Executive Orders. No, wait. Don’t do that. Read the back of the book. You’ll get the idea.

GoldenEye (1995)

Director: Martin Campbell

Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Sean Bean, Izabella Scorupco, Famke Janssen

Have I Seen It Before?: I may be the only person my relative age who has seen the movie, more than he has played the seminal Nintendo 64 video game, which itself was released in August of 1997, just a few months before the release of the films sequel, Tomorrow Never Dies (1997). Now you know.

Did I like it?: It’s clearly Brosnan’s best attempt in the role, buying him a measure of goodwill that would get him through the odious, Roger Moore-esque valley that was his swan song, Die Another Day (2002). If he had been more present and awake for his remaining three films in the series, he might have been in the running to rival Sean Connery himself.

Goldeneye is an interesting relic of its time. In the six years since the release—the longest between entries in the series—of Timothy Dalton’s last shot at the role, License to Kill (1989) the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union collapsed, and the machismo that had been core to the series up until this point started to feel passé. 

Some wondered if there was room for Bond in such a brave new world.

Which is hilarious, when one realizes that the far more scary and insidious threats were still in our future, and that the era of sexual harassment was not only not over, but was reaching its peak, Clinton-led golden age, and Bronsan is more than equal to the task of lecherously and sort of absent-mindedly forcing himself on women left and right.

The film also has some weird elements that age it squarely in the mid-90s.

Is it possible that Boris Grishenko (Alan Cumming) is the worst computer hacker ever to be conceived by 1990s film (a steep competition, to be sure)? His passwords are easily guessed words from the English dictionary, it appears one has an unlimited number of guesses to gain access to his systems, his fingers dance insanely over just a few keys of any keyboard (admittedly, he’s not alone among 90s movies hackers on that front), and when things inevitably go south for him in the third act, he takes out his frustrations with a monitor, like that is going to do something to re-set the guidance system of the GoldenEye weapon.

Also, the music is little weird. The theme, strangely written by Bono and The Edge, but performed by Tina Turner is fine, but apparently the production was somewhat disjointed, and the score reflects nothing of the melodies introduced in the theme. And then there is that score. Oh, man, that score, though. Long gone is the sweeping dramatic scores of John Barry and in its place is an occasionally off-putting faux techno score from French composer that felt vaguely antiquated at the time of release. As much as the rest of the film is strong, the music throughout may be the weakest throughout any of the 50-year-plus history of the series. I’ve often thought that a good score can make a film—for instance, Halloween (1978) borders on unwatchable with John Carpenter’s music—and one wonders if this could have been one of the absolute greatest in the series if John Barry could have been persuaded to return.