Vaguely recall watching this in its optimal setting as young boy (on cable with my dad), so it was about time to revisit John McTiernan and Jan de Bont’s era-defining muscular and tangible anamorphic craftsmanship being sturdily applied to Tom Clancy’s technically minded airport paperback thriller plotting.

It goes without saying that they make great use of the machinelike efficiency and momentum of the bureaucratic professional cause-and-effect submarine mechanics and trendy Cold War Red Scare paranoia, generating a sense of tensely flowing and cross-cutting procedure being navigated by smart professionals played by a stacked bench of ing character actors (Sam Neill, James Earl Jones, Scott Glenn, Tim Curry and more!) sweating, yelling at each other, looking at graphs/screens, etc. Which is also a great excuse for them to deploy all kinds of beautifully diffused lighting and meticulously controlled camera maneuvers through the authentically recreated naval sets of steel and steam and glowing colored buttons. It’s very easy to watch and stay engaged even once you realize it's so dedicated to hitting every convoluted plot development on the page it doesn’t have a ton of time or energy to offer on character beyond what the actors are capable of bringing to small moments.

I do think as far as the history of submarine thrillers are concerned I am a slight bit more partial to Wolfgang Peterson’s Crimson Tide which has a more focused view of the philosophical/ethical debate at its center between Denzel Washington’s rational anti-war executive officer and his hawkish, hotheaded cigar-chomping captain Gene Hackman whose pressurized dynamic benefits so much from the cramped setting.

I do also however get the appeal of Jack Ryan whose good-natured and bookish out-of-his-depth perspective (played with effective dorky everyman sincerity Alec Baldwin in his boyish era) helps sell his irable fight against the bureaucratic American political machines natural drift towards hysteria and destruction. Though it’s Sean Connery’s performance as the stoic, world-weary, and defecting “nearly a legend in the submarine community” Lithuanian-born Soviet naval captain who grounds all the motion and commotion of the plot with his existential anxiety about being tasked with starting a nuclear war and desire to go back to a time of peace and quiet, and fishing. (While also humorously speaking in his unmistakable Scottish accent despite his character background.) When his skilled navigation of the various, repetitive dangerous torpedo dodging setpieces are briefly interrupted by moments of intimacy with Sam Neill (“I widowed my wife the day I married her”) or the eventual respect and camaraderie he builds with Baldwin/Glenn when he lets the Americans commandeer him in the finale is arguably the best stuff in the film, and I wish there was a little more of it. “Welcome to the New World, sir.”

Full discussion on ep 374 of my podcast SLEAZOIDS.