Now Showing – Hunt for a Rooskie sub whose captain speaks with an Anglicized accent!

Sunday and it is movie time for me. So I pulled out a DVD from my collection and played it while having Iced Tea and slices of Alphonso mango. Today’s movie is an adaption of a Tom Clancy novel – Hunt For The Red October. No sooner had I pulled it out randomly, I had this dreadful feeling.  Sam Neil is still haunting me!!!

Sean Connery plays the Lithuanian captain of the sub and his British accent somehow set well with the role. Better than Robin Hood speaking with an American accent.

Movies based on spy novels cut corners to maintain running time and hence there is no scope for character development.  John McTiernan, the director seems to have a ready made solution. He cast Sean Connery as the protagonist Russian sub commander. Sean needs no character development. He wears it like a coat. You get the idea before the idea gets to you. He could play Gabbar Singh and speak British English and you would still clap!

Clancy’s novels are full of is research on NATO weaponry and US Government machinery. But the movie dispenses with the bull and takes it at the same speed as the protagonist submarine which is fitted with magnetohydrodynamic drive (!) for the kicks.

I cannot stand 10 minutes in one but like submarine movies. I like movies shot on any moving vehicle.  I can even take in a movie shot on oil rigs! I like to see men at work. Funnily enough, there were about one and a half women in this movie! One is an air hostess who speaks about 3 lines for 40 seconds and disappears. The other is Jack Ryan’s little daughter who has exactly one line and 20 seconds before she makes an exit too. Otherwise this is a guy’s movie without Rambo!

Ah yes! Sam Neil who would not leave me yet from my previous post. He plays a No. 2 to Sean; a serious no nonsense character. But he speaks with a silly Russian accent and spends his reel time with the facial expression of a guy who is behind all the sneaky farts. For a change, he was funny!