There are some issues with the film — it dumbed down Clancy’s book to such an extent that the author distanced himself from the production — but Ford is terrific.

| Feb 1, 2024

A very effective action and adventure film based on the novel by Tom Clancy. [Full review in Spanish]

| Jun 6, 2023

A trashy movie, a petulant stupidity, but Ford ennobles it. [Full review in Spanish]

| Jun 6, 2023

In many ways expanding the legacy of the best James Bond films, Patriot Games combines intelligence, technology and a strong emotional thread, drawing audiences into a taut, action-packed thrill ride.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 6, 2023

Patriot Games is a thrilling, exhausting adventure that leaves audiences wanting more. Armed with a fresh supply of brown suits and crisp blue shirts, Harrison Ford could be the man to keep the series going for a long, long time.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 6, 2023

For the non-Clancy viewer (me, for instance), it was just what such movies should be. It gets a good solid grip, pushes you slowly to somewhere around seat's edge, and doesn't let go.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 6, 2023

Patriot Games crackles with tension.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 6, 2023

Noyce knows that even hack thrillers deserve a complicated treatment on the screen, even if the hack raises hell about it.

| Jun 6, 2023

Ford is the film's Rock of Gibraltar. He glues everything together with his solidly restrained if unspectacular performance as the intense and intelligent former CIA man.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 6, 2023

Noyce avoids some of the opacity of the "Red October" adaptation, and most of the kneejerk reactionism of the novel. Noyce achieves this, however, by reducing the bloated book to a stock vigilante movie.

| Jun 6, 2023

It's a slam-bang action picture, but it has a kind of maturity, too -- at the end you know you've seen something. It ought to be a big hit.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 6, 2023

The IRA should sue for defamation of character. Still, the movie grips for most of its running time.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 6, 2023

There's not an ounce of plausibility to be found anywhere in the plot, or among its cast of characters, but it does have its moments. Australian director Phillip Noyce is a wild man with action scenes, and Ford remains [appealing].

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 6, 2023

Short on characterization and rationales, Patriot Games compensates by pumping along at high volume and relying on its good cast to convey the anxiety and horror of a chaotic, technology-driven world.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 6, 2023

Despite a few oddities, Patriot Games is well done, but you can't figure out why it was done... The filmmakers and actors are pros, but this is the original thing they have to say: "A man whose family is in danger will take strong steps to protect it."

| Jun 6, 2023

The screenplay, by W. Peter Iliff and Donald Stewart, eliminates most of Clancy's journalistic focus, and Noyce's primitive direction reduces the material even further, to the kind of simplistic melodrama most notoriously embodied by [Death Wish].

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 6, 2023

Directed by Australian Phillip Noyce, Patriot Games has flashes of brilliance and stretches of pedestrian predictability. The violet set-pieces are visceral stunners.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 6, 2023

Patriot Games delivers the best possible version of a tale that boils down to nothing but gamesmanship, as its title implies.

| Jun 6, 2023

Patriot Games is peppier than the boring glub-glub-glubbing of The Hunt for Red October. But despite Ford's self-deprecating charm, it's disappointingly ordinary, even by right-wing standards.

| Jun 6, 2023

There is something abstract and distant about Patriot Games. But there are at least four exciting preliminary confrontations... Along with the expert binding of Ford's performance, these are the juicy raisins in an otherwise blandish pudding.

| Jun 6, 2023