Unclear and Present Danger - The Hunt for Red October

Episode Date: October 28, 2021

This is the first episode of Unclear and Present Danger, a new podcast by Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times and John Ganz, a freelance journalist writing a book on American politics in the 1990s. It is a podcast about the political thrillers of that decade, and what they said — or did not say — about the United States in the last years and immediate aftermath of the Cold War. We’re going to cover a wide range of movies, but we thought we would begin with a paradigmatic example of the genre, John McTiernan’s The Hunt for Red October, based on the best-selling Tom Clancy novel.A quick correction: In the episode, Jamelle said that McTiernan went to jail for tax evasion. This was incorrect. He actually went to prison for lying to the FBI.

Hi. This is unclear and present danger. My name is Jemal Buoy. My name is John Gans. And this is a podcast about the Cold War, America Post Cold War, and about the movies that came out of that moment. A moment of triumph, anxiety, and eventually fear of what would just happen next in the world. Yeah, I guess we're going to talk about a bunch of the political thrillers that were released in the 90s. And what they say about America at that time and hopefully what they can tell us about America. at today. If you are of a certain age, you will remember the deluge of movies from the late 80s, the early 90s, up to pretty much the 9-11 era just before it, that were all about America's place in the world in one way, shape, or form or another. The, I think the movies that stand

out most of people, our movie is like Air Force One or in the line of fire. But there is, this is more or less an entire genre of film. And so we thought, as two people who write about politics who care about the politics of this era. John, you're writing a book about American politics in the 1990s. That's right. We thought it would be interesting to cover this from the perspective of the movies. And so we have a whole list of stuff we're going to cover. But today, we're going to start with what I think is one of the best of these films.

And I think in a lot of ways, an emblematic one, one that, one that, very much defines the genre. Other filmmakers take elements from it, certainly. And one that is, I think, thought of with quite a bit of fondness from audiences, older and younger. I'm in my 30th, Sean, you're in your 30s, so we're on the younger side. We're on the younger side of the people who remember this, but I don't think anyone younger than 30 cares about these movies, but who knows? I think they have a certain cult following.

But maybe, maybe I'm making that up in my, I don't know. Yeah. I'll ask my Zoomer cousins what they think. Sure. Until then, the movie that we're going to talk about today is the hunt for Red October, which is a 1990 film from director John McTiernan. John McTiernan, if you are familiar with this, filmography, directed Die Hard, directed a movie, unlike either this or Die Hard, The Medicine Man.

Oh, right. also with Sean Connery. Also with Sean Connery. I believe directed Die Hard with a vengeance. He had actually a great string of films and then went to prison for tax evasion. I didn't know that. Yeah. He got Wesley sniped in the end.

Oh, my God. And no longer making movies. But The Hunt for Out of October is probably the highlight of the work he's done. And it is, of course, based on a novel by Tom Clancy, Tom Clancy's debut novel. I think we could probably spend many hours talking about the work of Tom Clancy. And we will, I think over the course of this podcast, the subsequent episodes, that is, we will talk about Tom Clancy. But for now, we'll say that he is sort of the, you know, the patron saint of boomer dads,

of conservative boomer dads. And his sort of signature hero, Jack Ryan, the hero of this film, is a kind of wish fulfillment for for boomer dads. Absolutely. He's a, he's a very domestic CIA analyst, not an agent. This distinction has made a lot in the movies. He's, he's an office, he's supposed to have a desk job. He's a naval analyst, but he always ends up, you know, in the middle of the adventure.

So, you know, obviously it's an easy fantasy world to enter if you have a kind of a dreary office job. job or not so jury office job, but still not quite as, you know, adventurous as being a CIA agent. But yeah, this movie is really strangely near and dear to my heart. I think I've watched this movie upwards of 30 times, and if you think that's exaggerating, I'm not. When I was a kid, I was absolutely obsessed with this movie and rented it and watched it, it all the time. I was very interested. I don't know what came

first. I think I was always very interested in submarines as a kid. And this movie was, you know, among my favorites in that genre that I loved. I rented this all the time. I had the movie basically memorized. It was

very foundational for, you know, my interest and my imagination. So you know, it was a lot of fun to watch again, and I still enjoyed it. But yeah, this is been this is a very strangely enough very important movie to me um so i'm really happy that we're doing it first and uh yeah i likewise i'm a navy brat both my parents served in the navy for whole careers for at least 20 years each oh wow and so yeah um little known facts about me

i'm a navy brat so my dad who often picked the movies for us to watch was always picking something Navy related. And so the Hunts for Ragn, October is something I saw a lot, you know, back in the VHS days, back in the blockbuster days. And it's very much part of my, part of my sort of warm childhood feelings about this film. And I find myself revisiting it, I find myself revisiting it every so often, in part, both because it's a nostalgia thing. It's fun to sort of explore it a bit more.

but also because it's just actually very good. It's a super well-made movie. It's an extremely well-made movie. It looks great. It has a, you know, a murderer's row of acting talent and so much acting talent that you kind of forget the depth of it. So obviously, Alec Baldwin as Jack Ryan, the hero, Alex Baldwin is pretty early in his career at this point. Yeah, he's very young. His big movie prior to this was Beetlejuice.

he was in a very strange movie called Miami Blues if you ever want to check it out it's like a it's like a sleazy noir where Alec Baldwin does a lot of coke and there's a lot of tits so if that's your kind of thing I would recommend it but it's strange and he was had been in working girl and married to the mob right and very I another very strange performance in married to the mob But beyond Alec Baldwin, the sort of the build cast includes, obviously Sean Connery, he's on the poster, James Earl Jones, Sam Neal, Scott Glenn, sort of other cast members that you will recognize are Tim Curry, who is a Russian, plays a Russian naval officer, Courtney B. Vance, who plays an American communications officer, Fred Thompson, who was actually also very early in his career at this point as an action. actor playing a, I believe, based on his uniform, playing a officer, another non-commissioned officer. I think he's an, he's an, he's the admiral, right? He's the salty admiral on the aircraft carrier. He's a salty, yeah. Right, with a nice, thick Tennessee accent.

And Stellan Scarsguard plays the captain of the other Russian submarine out to, out for Red October. Right. he has that great line early on where he's at he's being asked what he's going to do and he's like we're going to go kill our friend we're going to kill a friend of genie yeah so that's the cast interesting sort of notes the filmmakers McTiernan's first choice for Jack Ryan was Kevin Costner terrible which is a terrible choice that would have been terrible just really not a good idea for

this role. Harrison Ford was approached to play the role and he turned it down, but of course he comes back. Right. He takes on the role in the subsequent movie Patriot Games and also clear and present danger. Right. So that's a little background for the movie. And I thought that before we kind of began talking about, you know, politics, we talk a little about what happens in the movie and sort of what we like about it. Sure. And so if you, if listeners, if you've not seen the hump for October. I actually recommend that you pause and go watch it. It's a little more than two hours, but it moves incredibly quickly. Again, it is a extremely well-being movie. And if you take as a rule that movies on submarines are just better than most other movies,

then I think you'll get a lot of enjoyment out of this. But if you have listened, let's continue on. And if you've paused for two hours and you've come back, let's continue on. So the film takes place in 1984, which is, I think, an important note. This is sort of the height of the late Cold War. It is pre-Gorberchov, and it is at a point where the United States is very much of the view that the Soviet Union is sort of moving towards a more aggressive stance. And the Soviet Union, of course, is dealing with all sorts of internal problems and internal difficulties, but it's still very much trying to project this image of strength. Sean Connery's character, Marco Rameas, is given command of the Red October,

which is a new kind of submarine, a typhoon class, that the American analyst believe is an offensive weapon, more or less, and you come to learn that Rameas also believe that it is an offensive weapon. And so at once at sea with a full crew, Ramius kills the political officer on board, the commissar, I guess you might say. Who's named Putin? That's right. Yeah, he's named Putin, strangely enough. That's very weird.

So Ramius kills him and then tells his officers that they're going to defect to the Americans. While this is happening, Jack Ryan is back in, I think he flies back to the United States to tell his appearance that he thinks the Soviets were deploying a new sub. American officers and American leadership believes that, again, this is an offensive weapon and that the Russians are planning something, but Jack Ryan, and the kind of scene that will repeat itself throughout this franchise is convinced that, in fact, the Ramius and the submarine are trying it to do something else. They might be trying to defect.

And so this, you know, through this, through the series of events, Jack Ryan is brought first on board, is he, correct me if I'm wrong. I always get this wrong. He's brought on board a aircraft carrier first, and then they bring him to the submarine. So, the American submarine. So what happens is the Red October sales, then they learn that the Soviet. Navy has orders to sink they're at October. The American fleet

thinks that he's gone mad and is going to launch missiles at the United States. But, yeah, Jack Ryan figures out that he thinks he's going to defect. The National Security Advisor goes with his hunch. They send him to an aircraft carrier

in the North Atlantic. And then he figures out that this Los Angeles class attack submarine that has figured out how to track Red October's super secret silent drive. He wants to get on that. So they have to helicopter him out to that submarine. He gets on that submarine. And they make contact with the Red October to make the plan of how to defect.

So it's a lot of moving around. It's very exciting. Yes. I mean, it's during this part that you have. one of my favorite scenes in the whole movie, which is a fighter aircraft crashes on the deck of the aircraft carrier. And Fred Thompson says, he says, this is going to get out of control. We'll be lucky to live through it. Yeah, this will get out of control. This will get out of control and we'll be lucky to survive. Yeah, to live through it. It's a great, it's a great line.

And I say it a lot to myself. It's a great line. And not to get too far into this, but I think it really gets to get to some of the underlying things that are driving this movie that I've never read the

Tom Clancy book I should say but I would be surprised if Tom Clancy had this had this sort of understanding

but I think that really comes through in the film which is this the sense that the Cold War the conflict

between the United States and Russia really has reached a is approaching a point of no return. It's approaching a point at which at which neither should have really be able to back down.

Yeah, and I think that the naval, the ships are so close to each other. The airplanes are starting to come into close proximity. There's a sense of like tension building in the movie that, you know, a war could be around the corner between the Soviet Union and the United States, which is pretty remarkable that they were able to make that so convincing in a movie that was actually, you know, released when the Cold War was effectively over. But, you know, it's just so convincingly made that, you know, you can completely suspend your disbelief and that the, you know, the political tension and the kind of military aspect of it all kind of works together really well. Yeah. I think that it's, yeah, it's, I mean, it's just,

It's just a great mix of a movie that is, you know, sophisticated enough on the level of the script and the concept that it's, you know, it's smart, but it's still like, it's not, it's not an action thriller with the amount of explosions that people would probably expect today, but still, you know, it's an exciting movie for sure. It is funny to think about what this movie would look like if it were made today. I mean, certainly the, the parts that. I think really give it, give the movie staying power, which are these sort of long scenes among the Russian officers about their situation, about what they want. There's Sam Neal's great scene where he talks about wanting to live in Montana. Well, first asking if he'll be allowed to live in Montana. Right. And Rameas saying, well, you know, there are no passes. You can move as you please. And then him saying, well, I would like a truck in a large American wife and wanting to live out that domesticity.

But let's move a little further through the plot. The, you know, Red October is at some point sabotaged. And the, this puts the ship in some danger as it's doing maneuvers. Petty Officer Jones, who is Courtney B. Vance's character at this point realizes he has a way of tracking the Red October. The Soviet ambassador after this point lets the U.S. government know that Rameas is a renegade and requests help to sink the Red October, and that order is sent to the submarine, the USS Dallas, which, of course, is found the Red October. But Jack Ryan, who is convinced that Rameas plans to defect,

convinces the commander of the U.S. submarine to contact Rameas and attempt to aid the defection. There's a great sequence here with the crew on life rafts on the surf. and another U.S. ship is nearby, and there's sort of a whole, you know, a whole drama about whether they're actually going to get caught. I'm trying to, I don't want to, you know, like I said, you should watch the movie. I don't want to rush to the plot, but also don't want to spend too much time on it. So we'll skip ahead a little bit. So the Red October is attacked by the other Soviet submarine that has been hunting it. One of the Red October's

cooks, who at this point you've seen several times looking suspiciously at Rameas and other crew members turns out to be an undercover, you know, Russian intelligence agent and the Sabotech on Boar tree fires at the bridge. He fatally wounds Sam Neal's character. And Ryan at this point is on the ship, too. So Ryan, Rameas, pursue him. subdue him, and the Red October commences evasive maneuvers with a diversion provided by the Dallas, which causes the other Russian submarine to be destroyed by its own torpedo. Another fantastic sequence accomplished so much more. I mean, there's obvious exterior shots of the submarines and of the missiles and everything,

but so much of the dynamism and the tension in the scene, it's just for these close. close-ups with the two commanders and the interiors of the submarine. And at this point, I mean, at this point, that's like the climax of the film. And at this point, you know, the movie is not quite over, but the Red October reaches American waters, rameas defects. He explains that the, you know, he's defecting because he realizes the submarine is just too dangerous. And quotes Christopher Christopher Columbus.

to which Jack Ryan says, Welcome to the New World, sir. It's very neat, very tidy. Yeah, they hide it in a river in Maine, so the Soviet satellites won't look there, which coincidentally is where Jack Ryan grew up. So there's a sentimental connection for him where they end up.

Yeah, that's pretty much the movie right there. I think, you know, what you mentioned is, you know, how good the movie still looks because this is sort of, This is a pre-CGI film, and, like, this, you know, these action sequences that you've described, they're all done with scale models, and they just don't haven't aged very much. Like, it's still, it looks great. And, you know, I was watching the movie this morning and last night, and I was like, yeah,

this is, you know, I can enjoy a dated looking movie, but I was like, this movie really is not showing much of its age. I mean, it obviously reflects technology from that period of the Cold War, but it doesn't look like, oh, this movie, you know, was made, and its visual effects are starting to look a little corny, and it's, you know, it's remarkably an ageless movie, even though it's, you know, from this particular time and has a particular historical reference. It was my observation watching it now. Yes, and I think it's worth, it's worth getting into those historical reference, because, So much the plot of this movie seems to, I mean, the driving force behind the plot of this movie is this idea of the Soviet Union is an aggressor. That the Soviet Union is going to create, would create a submarine design for first strike capability in that, you know, the United States would have no way to counter it. And, I mean, that to me, that to me is so, it very much, the movie comes out in 1990.

It's filmed in 88 and 89, but that is such an early to mid-80s perspective to have. Since what we know now, you know, looking back, because the Soviet Union at that time was basically like, you know, a sclerotic and collapsing empire that could barely, that was reeling from its defeats and resources. heavy in, you know, research-heavy wars in Afghanistan. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the premise is a little ridiculous that, you know, that the Soviet Union

in the middle of the 1980s would come up with the technology that would you know, threaten the United States. In retrospect, is a little silly. But I think it kind of adds to the charm of the movie. Yeah, I mean, you know, this is Tom Clancy.

first novel, and it was published on, like, the Annapolis Naval Press or something like that. It was not picked up by a big house. It was published by a company that mostly published naval analysis. This novel

was for naval nerds in a way. It had an enormous met of technical detail, but it was suffused with the ideology of high Reaganism. And in fact, it became a huge hit. among Reagan administration officials

because it really reflected their beliefs about the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union remained a threat to the United States, that the United States was attractive to people behind the Iron Curtain who had wanted to fact still. So it really fit in with the whole imaginary of the Reagan years, and, you know, it became a huge hit with, you know, cold warriors and people who actually had power. But, yeah, the, you know, the idea that the Soviets were going to develop a technology at that point that would send us for a loop and we would have difficulty tracking and would be an offensive first strike weapon, you know,

obviously, not to sound too conspiratorial, but definitely fits in with the agenda of the military industrial complex of the time, which was sort of hyping up the Soviet threat as part of, you know, our foreign policy. But I think by the time the movie comes out, it's attitude towards the Soviet Union or has to be a little bit more ironic. And like the way it's presented, you know, the movie has a wonderful score by what's his name, Basil Pauladouris, I think his name, which includes like these

these kind of choral, choir singing of, you know, a Russian and there's a lot of imagery. I mean, the name of the ship or the boat is Red October, which refers to the October Revolution.

There's a lot of imagery that sort of presents the Soviet Union as in the light that you know you might see it more in contemporary Cold War thrillers which is in a slightly ironic light which is that you know obviously this is a little bit of a paper tiger and you know a fading power and its it's its pomp and circumstance around it was always slightly absurd so I think it really successfully alters the threat of the Soviet Union from something I think in the novel was like real and then in the movie

is given a little bit more ironic distance. And I think it also tries to make the movie less about Soviet power and more about the end of the Soviet Union when at the end of the film, you know, Sean Connery, the former senior Soviet subcommander says to Alec Baldwin, you know, a little revolution every now and then is a good thing. Obviously, making reference to the, they talk about how, you know, this will cause big political problems back in the Soviet Union.

The implication kind of being that maybe the Red October triggers the end of the Soviet Union or something like that. The incident with the Red October kind of triggers the end of the Soviet Union. So, yeah, I think, you know, the politics changing, it's incredible how, I mean, obviously, Hollywood is a little bit more liberal and traditionally and kind of brings its own politics. But it's interesting to me from

1984, the perspective of the novel is the Soviet Union as legitimate threat. And this movie made as the first kind of, you could say it's the first post-Cold War period piece. Because even though it's going back a few years,

and you know, this irony when I was a kid, the dramatic irony where they present the Soviet Union in this was completely lost on me. So I just thought it looked really cool. And I thought that the music was awesome. I thought that the Soviet submarines were awesome.

I thought that their uniforms were cool. And I just fell in love with it. And it kind of made me a communist. Because I got obsessed with the Soviet Union. You know, if this was just, I was, you know, eight. So this is a few years after the, you know, fall of the Soviet Union. And I took out it because of Hunter Actover, I took out like a library book that came out in the 80s about the Soviet Union, like some National Geographic book. And I was asked my teacher if I could write a report on it.

You know, so weirdly the movie kind of appropriates Soviet propaganda themes in order to kind of put this in this ironic light, because we all know the Soviet Union is kind of over. but weirdly enough, like I just as a child just completely internalized them and did not like pick up on the you know ironic comment that the movie was making on them or it's pro-Americanism. I mean I guess I just thought you know okay well and you know my child mind just made it all work out where I was like I'm on the

American side but I'm on the Soviet side too but yeah it's interesting that the film had all of this kind of subtle way of dealing with the time frame that it's set in, which I now can appreciate it. But when I was a kid, I just, I was like, this stuff is all cool, but I didn't kind of get what it was doing. Yeah. The fact that it comes out in 1990, which is both in the middle of one kind of American

triumphalism and on the cusp of another, right? Sure, the following year, there's the Gulf War. Right. The United States wins this big victory, this big coalition victory against Saddam, who's saying George H.W. Bush is riding high. It really is a moment of America. Fuck yeah, right? It's a, it's a triumphless moment. 1990 isn't quite there yet, but the Soviet Union is collapsed, more or less. We're on, it is, it is over for all intents and purposes. And so this movie, this movie hits at a moment where Americans, I think, are feeling very good

about their place in the world. Yeah. There is no, there's no even hint. of anxiety about what it's going to come next. It is not just that America is triumphant, that it is, you know, ingenious, American intelligence officials and American military men are smart and they're ingenious and they're dependable and they have integrity. Yeah. And the, and America is so attractive, right? America is so, so much on top that even our, you know, putative enemies do want, do want to be a part of the American project.

They want to be, um, uh, authentic American, sort of the movie, the movie in its treatment of the crew of the Red October is almost saying, you know, deep down in every communist is sort of an American yearning to be free. Right. Um, and I don't think, I don't think, I don't think. You could get away with that kind of approach to those characters if this movie had been made five years earlier. If it had been made in the immediate wake of the book's release, you know, a movie about a rogue Soviet submarine and made in 1980 and 1981, I think we'd have a very different tone, both much more pessimistic about the American military's ability to do anything about it and also much more pessimistic about the Soviet Union's military capabilities. And I think that if you try to push this movie forward five or six years, like a decade after the publication of the book and several years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and we can begin to see what the consequences of that can be, I think it would also be a bit more of a pessimistic movie, a bit more of a movie about kind of the chaos unleashed by the Soviet Union. But this kind of brief period where the Soviet Union is in decline, America is on top. But there is almost not just an optimism about the American military might and its continued power,

but an optimism about the state of the world, right? An optimism that American military might will be able to keep the world in an order that is conducive to American interests is a thing that I'm not sure you could do. I'm not sure you would write four or five to six years after this movie comes out and when we tackle other Jack Ryan movies I think you'll see exactly this I think you'll see exactly

the extent to which the post-Cold War pessimism starts to really set in very quickly in popular culture yeah I mean that's true I mean like look there's no hint of the post-Soviet world I mean, it is the last, in a way, it, you know, I think what, what adds to its nostalgic tenor is, on top of just, you know, us being young when we watched it, is a few things. I think that it, it kind of presents the Cold War in its ideological purity as being like, yeah, the United States is fundamentally decent.

the Soviet Union is a mess and kind of and bad and uh we won through being smarter and better and um you know the the movie is about the threat of nuclear annihilation being taken off the table because this guy decides you know that he doesn't believe in the Soviet Union and he takes away this horrific weapon from them um you know it is the cold war and it doesn't present unlike a La Caree a movie. I mean, it's not the Cold War presented as crudely as it is, say, in some other Reagan era movies like Red Dawn or something like that, which has a kind of dystopian obvious part of it. It's sort of, I think it is, it's sort of the Cold War as certain Cold War liberals would want to see it. That doesn't kind of, it's, there is a militaristic part of it, but it's the military and the intelligence agencies are,

very smart you know the the the protagonist is a is a bureaucrat you know he's a he's an analyst um and his academic knowledge and analytical powers are what he you know brings to the table and not brawn like rambo or something like that or uh or james bond or something or you know so yeah i think that there's there's an aspect of the movie that's just like you know this is the way the cold war you know, cold warriors, especially ones in the bureaucracies would like to view themselves, which I think is why it was such a big hit when the novel came out with people

who actually worked in national security. I think that, you know, yeah, as you're saying, I think that the feeling about the United States wouldn't last very long. I mean, I know from the research of my book is that, you know, 1990 with the Gulf War, as you mentioned, was really a high point. And the, I mean, there were other currents going on. But the sense of pessimism about the state of the world picked up quickly.

I mean, there's no hint of nationals in the movie. And very quickly after it came out, you know, the situation in Yugoslavia obviously started to appear. The nationalisms of all the successor states to the Soviet Union and all the communist powers started to look, you know, quite threatening and was the subject was going to be the subject of movies that we're going to discuss in the future. So yeah, I mean, the nostalgia aspect of the movie is really enhanced

by the fact that I think that, you know, this picked up a part of the United States, a moment in the history of the United States, it felt very secure, and it communicates it by being kind of a very cozy movie. And even though it's adventurous, you know, it shows

Jack Ryan's domestic life and a very a very nice light and you know there's something I always think I mean this might be crazy but I always think the submarine there's something even though they're adventure movies there's something cozy about submarine movies

because of the interior spaces that they're always in and they're always like contained in these tight spaces which are sort of I don't know I find them comforting I'm sure for some people they find them would find it claustrophobic and terrifying but I think there's like an interiority

of the movie in the fact that takes place in offices and then in submarines and you know there are obviously some incredible exterior shots but it's a very internal movie which adds I think to its it's kind of cozy and nostalgia factor you know I I'm thinking about the the contrast you made between just Jack Ryan as a hero and other sort of like Cold War heroes you know the Rambo of the Rambo sequels, because of course, the first Rambo movie is this kind of somber post-Vietnam movie about, I mean, still kind of right-wing, but like right-wing in a more respectable way.

And right-wing in sort of a weirdly anti-authority way, since the cops are the enemies in Rambo. Right. But the sequels are just sort of like, you know, pure propaganda porn. Right. And it is interesting. I think you're right to note the Cold War. Note how this movie, despite its popularity with the Reaganites, despite Trudevitz, it's real, very obvious admiration for the U.S. military, not despite, with its very obvious admiration for the U.S. military.

and it's sort of egghead protagonist. It's sort of like the Cold War liberal fantasy of how American military power is, right? Not blundering, not short-sighted, but responsible, intelligent, open to change and flexibility, right, not rigidly committed to a singular path. I think that that is. really embodied both in Jack Ryan and also his boss, the director of the CIA, played by James Earl Jones, who is sort of like American, literally American intelligence embodied, where he's sort of like extremely politically savvy, uh, but not cynical and knows who to trust and who to delegate and, um, you know, and is, as admired by his, his subordinates and his superior, And, like, it's just sort of, like, the embodiment, in the same way that the character is, just the embodiment of everything that's good about the United States, which I think actually plays out more in the following movies. But, yeah, I think that that character is particularly a very Cold War liberal fantasy about the national security state and the people who, the people who are in it.

I think, you know, James Earl Jones's character as CIA director, I think, or I don't know if he's deputy director in this movie and becomes director later, is sort of like what the brushagate liberals were fantasizing as the people behind the scenes leaking and the stuff. It's just like, yeah, this is like who you hope is in charge, not the people who order torture and so forth. It's James Earl Jones. It's not, you know, I don't know, Gina Hempel or what's her name? Yeah, the director, Gina Haspel. The director of the CIA. So, yeah, I think that there's a lot of idealism about the people who, I mean, they show like American military officers can be stupid or short-sided, but need to be directed by these wiser forces in the intelligence bureaus. And then they'll get on to the right thing, which, you know, I'll say, yeah, it's not, it's not for nothing just on James Earl Jones.

It's not for nothing that he's black, right? It's a sort of implicit message that the American intelligence forces, American military is meritocracy, that these aren't just the wisest people, but they got there through their own hard work, their hardworking grit, that this isn't, he's, the Soviet officer has very much appeared to be sort of like apparatus. yes um uh there because of who they know and um you know maybe even who their families were right but we know we know just from james girl jones being a black guy that that's not the case for him right right he's you know it shows that the united states has you know is in a in a post racial moment in 1990 which is funny to think about but yeah i mean you know there's still i looked there's never there's still not been a black director of the CIA so that's I mean not that necessarily would be such an

accomplishment but I'd be happy for that never to be never to happen I don't want I don't that's a barrier that doesn't need to be broken yeah right I don't want to like log on to Twitter and people being you know excited about our first the first black guy to be your black woman to be director of the CIA yeah yeah um so yeah It's an interesting, I think, adding to the liberal aspect of it, or, you know, certain types of conservatism, which show the U.S. as a racial meritocracy and as being diverse and the Soviet Union as being, you know, hyper. Well, he's an ethnic, he's an ethnic, which is kind of a weird subplod of the movie, which makes him doubt, his, makes him wonder about his loyalty to the Soviet Union because he's actually Lithuanian and not a Russian. This is Sean Connery's.

Rameas. Yeah, Rameas. So, and that's sort of like part of his analysis and why he might want to defect is because he's not actually Russian. Um, which, so I guess I was wrong. There is the beginnings of, you know, thinking about post-Sovian nationalisms there, the seeds of it. Um, but yeah, I mean, that, I, I think that's, that's absolutely right. And I think that, um, yeah, there's a lot of suggestion that there's a lot of cronyism and corruption and, um, kind of almost an aristocracy on the Soviet side. There's also mentions of political connections and people's families and so on and so forth, which I'm sure was true.

But they really emphasized the inequalities or the class system that's going on in the Soviet Union compared to the United States as a kind of meritocracy. It's also meritocratic because Ryan is a nobody at the beginning of the movie and just through being smart and knowing the right thing, he moves through the bureaucracy and all the red tape of the American national security state very quickly because they're like, that guy's smart. Put him in charge, you know,

rather than him getting shunted to the side in favor of people who have better political connections. Rather than, like, who the fuck are you? Right, exactly, and be like, this is absurd. But, yeah, it shows the system working at a very smooth and regular pace. Which I think is also, you know, adds an additional fantasy about how the U.S. government works, how our entire society works. Yeah, so I think that, you know, it's really interesting just to think about what comes after that, that, you know, in a way, it's nostalgic for the Cold War because this moment was like the last time that these fantasies. made sense and then you know the movie's already a little bit in retrospect but that still

kind of works um as a as a kind of like binding glue for american society or or and then after that you know it's it's a it's a it's a more complicated story um and yeah it's interesting to me that the I mean, my other thing about its Soviet kitsch that I discussed a little bit more is, like, my almost Slavois-Zijek interpretation of the movie based on my own way of, that I took it up, is that there's something actually nostalgic about the Soviet Union in the movie, because it, first of all, as rival, as ideological rival to the U.S. that we kind of need in order to feel good about ourselves, even though we're beating them. so it's like we're beating them but they still exist in order to be there for us to beat them um but i think that the movie like has a weird Soviet nostalgia even though it ironically treats the Soviet project as but it's like yeah like there was a whole

belief in this civilization and this alternative you know path through modernity and equalitarian society possible that the movie sort of presents as you know ironically and as being over and sort of absurd but in a way like strongly shows the necessity of the ideological necessity of it because first of all it shows america being at its absolute height having this as an opposition. And then it has his own weird, its own weird revolutionary, not nostalgia, but revolutionary subtext with the name of the submarine being Red October, named after the Russian revolution, and the little piece of dialogue at the end where he says, like, revolution, isn't

revolution, a little revolution every now and that is a good thing. So it's almost like there's a weird my maybe reading a little too much and after watching it 30 times is that the movie has a moment of sympathy or nostalgia for the project of the Soviet Union partly sincerely and partly just to have his arrival to the United States. I don't know if that's going too far. No, I don't think it's going too far at all. I mean, Ramey is presented as an honorable man. These are honorable men. I mean, this is the thing. They're not, be, be, The dishonorable men on the Soviet side are the political officers, are the bureaucrats, kind of in a bit of a turn vis-a-vis Ryan, but the actual rank-and-file Soviet sailors are

presented as being honorable men. Even the commander, Stellan Skarskard's character, the commander of the other Soviet sub, hunting the Red October, is presented as an honorable man, as someone who is simply doing his duty and kind of the the perspective the film seems to take is that it is regrettable that these are men who operate under this, you know, false system, under this, you know, declining system. But the men themselves are on par, are of the same quality as the American soldiers. I think this, this again gets to the liberalism you identified.

These are not, the soldiers of sailors were not the enemy. The system is the enemy. Right. And that we should be able to sympathize with the Soviet sailors as, as decent people doing their duty to the best of their ability. Right. Yeah, I think that's right. And, yeah, it shows, like, the politics of the Soviet Union as being, you know, the problem and the system is the problem. But the people as being essentially good.

And, you know, it doesn't even show the interesting thing about the last piece of dialogue in the movie is, like, his reason for defecting the United States, I don't know about the novel. but in the movie is not ideological. He's not, he doesn't renounce the Soviet Union. He renounces the, the, the, he believes that the Red October is an offensive weapon, and it's going to be used to launch a first strike against the United States. So he doesn't want to go along with that. So he's just against, he doesn't, and he has another reason because his wife died while he was at sea, and he feels hurt and betrayed because of that.

He doesn't really say, like, he's not an anti-com, he doesn't, pay lip service to kind of anti-communism at any time in the movie he's just like i don't want to be in charge of a weapon that will cause the the third world war and so he you know he even says at the end of the movie still referring to himself as a soviet citizen he said there are those of us who believe that we should strike the u.s first and the red october was built for that purpose and I realized, you know, I couldn't be a part of that. So he has a sort of self-sacrificing reason for defecting, and it's to prevent a nuclear war. It's not really because he never says, oh, I don't believe in the Soviet Union anymore.

I don't believe in communism anymore. I mean, I'm sure it's implied that, but it's, he's not a rabid, there's not a rabid anti-communism propaganda put into his mouth by the movie. His reasons are purely humanitarian, which is to, and personal, which is to, you know, kind of remove the threat of nuclear war. Right. This movie might be a little, it might be a bit propagatistic, propagandists, I can never say that word out. Propagandistic. This movie might be a bit of propaganda, but it's not, I mean, it's not, you know, it's not crude or anything.

Not at all. It's a very, very fine propaganda. Yeah. So this, I think it's worth saying this movie did gangbusters at the box office. It was made on a budget of about $30 million, which is very impressive even for, you know, late 80s dollars, what they were able to do with the budget that relatively modest. But it made, you know, something like $200 million. It was a big hit with audiences.

And I think it was a big hit in part because audiences picked, in addition to Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin and everyone, James Earl Jones, these kind of, these, these actors who can reliably bring, bring audiences. I think audiences also recognized some of the, the pro-American themes that we're talking about. And, of course, by this point, Tom Clancy was a big phenomenon as well. So I'm sure that brought in huge audiences as well. I'm sure America's dads were eager to line up at the movie theater on Friday night.

This came out. Yeah. You know what? I think that's interesting. It's like because, you know, I think a big impetus of this podcast is obviously our own nostalgic feelings for these movies, which we both, I think, are now able to look at in slightly more critical light and see the ideological things going on and all their problems. But, you know, when you talk about America's dad's going to watch these movies, in a way, you know, is it so bad? Is it so horrible? Like, is it, if we're going to have a propagandistic, picture of America, of imperialist America, is this the worst one? I would argue no. And, you know, some of the, some of the, um, picture, some of the American militarism or American triumphism that has come afterwards has been cruder and more problematic and racist or whatever you want to say about it. Um, so yeah, I mean, I was wondering what you think about that. Like, like, is is that just our nostalgia for the movie as being, you know, a more secure time, or is it like, was this, is this, it's like when you watch, it's like when you watch movies from the 30s and 40, and this is almost an era of the hall of Hollywood that is showing its age in the way that movies from the 30s and 40s do now, where it's like, oh yeah, I can kind of see what the, the difference between the way this society thought about itself and the way we think about ourselves now.

But, you know, when I watch movies from the era and I'm aware of all the problems of their society, I'm like, yes, but certain ideological things that they had going on weren't the worst. So when I watch movies from the World War II, I'm like, yeah, of course, it was a terrible time in many ways, but they're certain, they're on to something. I was wondering if you had a similar feeling or you felt more critical about it. No, I mean, I think I said at the beginning that I'm a Navy brat And I think this gets into this somewhat, which is that There is something to be said for a pro-US military picture That nonetheless

Is not necessarily militaristic You know what I'm saying? It's pro-U.S. military. It's pro-the-security. It's pro-the-security state But it's not bloodthirsty, it's not trigger-happy, it's not a movie, it's not a movie that, like, valorizes aggression. It's a movie that valorizes cooperation, that valorizes decency, that valorizes meritocracy. It's sort of within the context of propaganda film about the United States, it valorizes qualities that are, are actually probably worth worth valorizing in a way that you you miss from say the post post 9-11 films which are really are you know if you go back and maybe we'll do this if you go back

and watch some of these post-911 action movies American military films they are you know they're they're not great i've seen i mean i've seen a couple i i i and yeah i mean i think it kind of ebbs and flows in American War movies you know how brutal they are and how they celebrate brutality but it's just like there's a much

different to me there's a much different form of ideology going on here than like all this tactical shit you know with special ops and things like which kind of comes out later Jack Ryan movies which we'll talk about but like

there's something a little bit more anything that just has to do with like the naval context of it in general it's just like there's something a little bit more civilized to me about like ships and you know fighting on ships than hand-to-hand combat or whatever um which you know could just be again the propaganda sheen of the movie but yeah i i think that there's something really appealing about the movie in in retrospect living in um you know an america that feels a lot less secure. And obviously, you know, we can look back and understand that the image of the United States that was being presented by this movie is fictitious and, you know, highly propagandistic and ideological. But I think admit to ourselves that they're nonetheless extremely attractive parts of it, too. Yeah. Yeah.

So let's wrap up. Sure. Any final thoughts beyond that? Any, any last thoughts on this movie? I love, I love Hunt for October. it's one of the best movies ever made, in my opinion. And, I mean, you know, I kind of mean that. I think it's, it is a perfect Hollywood movie in a lot of ways.

It's just really entertaining, but really well made. And just, even though it's sort of a long movie, it's just a breeze to watch. And I think there's a lot of interesting things. I mean, obviously, I think there's a lot of interesting things to think about it, too, even though it's, you know, not an overly cerebral film. uh in a lot of ways and uh yeah i highly recommend it and i hope if you haven't seen it you enjoy it and if you do like it you you know this discussion resonates with you but i'm a huge fan of this movie and will always be a booster of it i i agree i i couldn't say it any better i'm a big

fan of this movie i'm a big fan of submarine movies i think this is yes me too peak a peak submarine movie. I own the 4K Blu-ray. I'm all in on this movie. So I'm glad we began this podcast with this movie. I think it's a great start. And sort of continuing the franchise, our next episode, which will be in two weeks from when this is released, will be Patriot Games, the sequel and the Jack Ryan franchise. And the first one starring Harrison Ford, Patriot Games is a film where the optimism and the sort of security that America feels will be not, it's beginning to wane in Patriot Games, not to the extent that it will and clear and present danger, the film after that and the namesake of this podcast, but certainly, certainly Patriot Games

shows how I think Americans are beginning to think about their place in the world now that the Soviet the Union is no longer looming over the country as its chief rival. Yeah, it's a much darker movie. Until then, however, for John Gans and myself, this is the podcast, Unclear and Present Danger. Thank you for listening, and we will see you soon. You're going to be.