Don't F#*k With Sean The Scottish Ruskie

As much as I like watching high, quality Oscar nominated stuff, every now and again you (well I) need to press the reset switch, and remind myself of the movies I like to watch, how I like 'em made. And so it is the turm of John Mctiernan's The Hunt for Red October starring Sean Connery & Alec Baldwin.

I'm a huge McTiernan fan (even his crapper efforts) and this constitutes one of his 3 classic movies, the others being Predator and Die Hard. I haven't seen it for a while but it still kicks unholy arse.

It gets it's kicks, not from big action setpieces (although there are a couple) but from clever characters trying to figure things out and outwit each other. Michael Bay, you don't alway have to have huge explosions (K'plow! K'bang!) to keep your audience glued to their seat. Brinksmanship and decision making give you wood too, whether it be in politics, tactics or scientific speculation. It's a big-scale, world-threatening plot that has a classic small-scale story at it's heart; a boy goes to sea and returns a man. Each character is driven in seperate plot strands by the muguffin, The Red October herself, to steal, locate, destroy, communicate with the ship.

Connery dominates, Baldwin proves himself a likable everyman hero (a role he seldom returned to once he discovered playing badboys and baddies), Scott Glenn convincing and Richard Jordan charismatic.

But director McTiernan is the daddy here. His compositions are distinctly his and the camera moves subtle but dynamic. The camera glides and creeps during conversations, hightening our reactions as we witness the cast's cleverness and cunning at work. Locations, strategies, objectives and geography are all clearly communicated visually to propel the complex story strands forward.

There's a slow but rhythmic poetry to the editing, and the music by Basil Poledouris adds a sence of wonder to the military world. Red October's risky passage through the underwater canyon of Red Route One is grand and operatic (ain't no one's done that with Subs before). Cinematographer Jan De Bont proves here why he was one of the best ever, with camera flares glinting off the sub's interiors and there's smart use of depth of field to guide the audience's eye.

This is superior film-making. And despite the rave above, it's still my 3rd favorite Mctiernan movie after the other 2 mentioned above.