A Movie Nearly Every Night: The Hunt For Red October

The Hunt For Red October (1990)
Dir: John "With a Vengeance" McTiernan
Starring: Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Scott Glenn, James Earl Jones -- in short, men. All men. Every man-jack one of them.

Ramius bids do svidanya to fishing in Polyarny.

To help me with this man movie today is the cousin/roommate.

How many times have we seen this movie? -- cuh ... I have no idea. Oh, you know, 20 times? -- So this time, keeping in mind that we're looking for meaning, we watched it with a different viewpoint. Specifically: What was really going on here? What was this movie really talking about? We decided it was about fear. -- Well, yeah ... it's pretty much using the rules, going by the regular rules, but a lot of it is driven by fear. -- It all starts with fear. -- Yeah. -- Ramius is afraid of nuclear war and steals the Red October. Alec Baldwin is afraid of flying. The guys in the war room are afraid of everything they don't know or think they know. Even James Earl Jones is afraid Jack is saying too much. I love how he puts his hand on Jack's arm to calm him down in that soft, fatherly way.

"I told you to speak your mind, Jack, but Jesus..."

The only one who isn't really afraid of anything is the senator. -- Without him it wouldn't go anywhere. -- I wonder why he's not afraid. -- That's a good question. It's because he's a sandman. He knows he's not going to live past 30. -- Yeah, half the guys in the room are late for Carousel. No wonder they're edgy.

the analyst and the guy who kisses babies and steals their lollipops

Man we need Logan's Run on Bluray.

But it's interesting that in a movie with so much machismo and procedural male organization, that fear plays such an important role in how they react to each other. Everyone's afraid that everyone else will over-react or react incorrectly, and it's not until they master that preconception of reaction that they succeed. -- Or how they manage other people's fear, like with the radiation. -- Oh right, that's how they get them off the boat, by making them afraid of it. -- Or with the officers, they're more afraid of dying than of being captured. They're well-motivated because they'll die if they don't follow Ramius. --

Yeah, yeah ... see? It's knowing what the other guy is afraid of and using it to your advantage, all the while knowing that you're also afraid of stuff. What if you meet a buckaroo? What if the chopper crashes in the icy North Atlantic? What if you can't beat Tupolev at chicken? (Dude, his sub ... honestly, who the hell would want to work on it?)

But, I think the most important thing and we both agree on it, is that the engineer on the Red October is the best character. Hands down.

Yeah. Or the best cigarette ad.