Tarantino's thoughts on patriot games

I agree with Tarantino with respect of the 'bad guy'. The film shouldn't have turned him into a raging psychopath, but someone who had what he felt was a legitimate, and to an audience perhaps even understandable, reason for going after Jack Ryan. But generally I don't care for 'revenge films' when the person doing the revenge is the 'hero'. I think there are some very dodgy implications to films that promote vigilantism by otherwise sympathetic and law-abiding citizens, as if to say that vigilantes have no other choice. People don't need an excuse to pursue violence as an option. They'll do so on instinct and because they really do feel they have no other choice at a given time. But films shouldn't seek to rationalise such behaviour, because the only excuse for a sane, moral human-being turning to violence is that they have lost all sense of rationality (whether temporarily or to permanent effect).

Thus, I am glad that Jack Ryan isn't some blood-thirsty vigilante in these films, but an understandably angry, passionate man who nevertheless only uses violence as a means of self-defence or to protect others. That's a hero I can relate to far more than a calculating 'revenge' killer.

That said, I am a huge fan of Tarantino and more often than not agree with his conclusions. I also see his point about 'movie jail' as far as convenient bad guy deaths go. It's a cop-out. And the hero should either kill the baddie or find a way to apprehend him. If the baddie is going to die by some other means, it should be down to their own hubris or perhaps the actions of a secondary character (either another villain, sidekick or a traumatised victim).

Tarantino requires movie heroes to get blood on their hands. I do not. His obsession with movie protagonists murdering those who wronged them is a bit obnoxious, to my way of thinking. It's good that Jack Ryan didn't gore the Sean Bean character as Jack is simply not that guy. Besides, his conscience would've bothered him forever. This isn't a DEATH WISH movie.

Who the *beep* cares what Tarantino has to say about anything?

Tarantino’s thoughts are legit on the revenge thing. The movie avoided a lot of Sean Miller. They didn’t give him any sort of redeeming traits, they didn’t flesh out the relationship or love between Miller and his brother. I agree with Tarantino that the filmmakers avoided those details because they didn’t want to viewer to sympathize with Miller.

One detail that Tarantino misses is that Ryan had no intentions of killing the brother; he just runs into it. But Miller acted with intent to kill Ryan’s family. There is also a difference between killing an IRA soldier (even a teenager) and killing an innocent lady and child.

I disagree with Tarantino about the accidental death on the boat. Remember - Ryan is not this badazz CIA fighter. He’s an analyst. Miller, on the other hand, is a trained IRA member. The death really conveyed the sense that Ryan just got lucky; he wasn’t really the better fighter.

I always thought that they killed Sean Miller like that because that way they could bring him back in a potential sequel because the audience did not actually see him die even though he would obviously be severely scarred.

I think the intricacies of this Clancy book are a bit above QT's pay grade. He just does stories about thugs shooting each other.

Those cabinet members knew they had a traitor in their midst but it wasn't until the instant Jack/Ford took on the Watkins guy that he was sniffed out, so looking at the other bad guys you can't say they weren't being played or strategically taken down. And needless to say it was quick justice enacted on them.