Critic Reviews

Everything you would want in a summer action-suspense movie - and just a little bit more. The movie delivers enough thrills to satisfy all but the most hard-core adrenaline addicts. And several touches, especially the lead performance of Harrison Ford, elevate this film above the standard summer suspense offerings.[9 June 1992, p.4D]

TERRIFIC cast, imaginative direction - Patriot Games is such an enjoyable film that you keep hoping it will go the extra mile, that it will transcend the action-genre and progress from an intelligently made picture to an intelligently themed picture, That it doesn't - not quite, anyway - is mildly disappointing but easily forgiven; there's a lot to be grateful for here. [9 June 1992]

The fierce-looking Sean Bean is outstandingly good as Ryan's main antagonist, and Patrick Bergin brings the right air of calculation to the terrorist mastermind he plays. Several of the film's main sequences, like an encounter between Mr. Bean's Sean Miller and David Threlfall as the police inspector who has been his captor, derive their horror from the looks of pure loathing that these terrorists bestow upon their prey.

Apart from the odd titter, this is a sound formula suspense movie with spiffy set piece thrills, directed with assurance by Dead Calm's Philip Noyce and attractively played by the plausibly anxious principals.

Harrison Ford - that most decent of decent men - helps to carry the new film on his broad shoulders. With his blunt, Everyman features and sympathetically furrowed brow, he comes off as such a solid, good guy that it's impossible not to care about his upstanding character.

A slam-bang terrorist thriller from first frame to last. It also is astonishingly conventional. You've seen the plot machinations up to the final showdown in a dark, secluded house in dozens of movies before, though rarely so well-orchestrated. [5 June 1992, p.5]

A pretty good how-to movie as far as the CIA combating terrorism is concerned and a very good movie in terms of explaining why Harrison Ford is one of the most compelling leading men. [5 June 1992, p.C2]

The movie is at its most chilling, oddly enough, when one or another chase isn't going on. The real fun begins when Ryan becomes desperate and goes for help to his old pals in intelligence. This is prime Clancy material -- high-tech surveillance, computerized image enhancement, Intelligence with a capital "I." [5 June 1992, p.G5]

Best of all is Richard Harris as Paddy O'Neil, an IRA spokesman. With his deeply lined and very Irish face, Harris has a wonderful look for the part. [5 June 1992, p.D1]

Patriot Games doesn't set any new standards for its genre, but it delivers the goods, announcing a sequel with a hokey but wonderfully domestic cliffhanger. [5 June 1992, p.24]