Submarines Make Me Feel Fine

Whelp, better late than never, right?  Is The Hunt for Red October (1990) one of those movies that you need to see before you die?  Or is it just another tile from the big tile factory?  ...like I need to tell you, that's from one of the episodes of "Feud: Bette and Joan."  Well, the Maltin guide gives it 3.5 stars, so clearly it's got legs and a bit of goodwill behind it.  The book nerds at my high school were excited about Tom Clancy finally getting his Hollywood due, being both fans of fine literature and the fine Cold Warriors that they were.
I will say that perhaps Clancy was trying to warn us with the one character named Putin.  But the Russians on that vessel took care of that guy, that's for sure.  Thought he could just take over the whole sub by himself, eh?  Harumph!  Maybe history will repeat itself, who knows.  But I do know this: Sean Connery plays a bad guy here... or does he?  This isn't The Hill or The Offence, after all.  Plus, the producers were thinking blockbusters and sequels, so you know they weren't going to get too dark with the proceedings.  Sorry... SPOILER ALERT(s).  That it's rated a mere "PG" instead of "PG-13" is merely a sign of the times.  A "PG" rating was still fashionable then; now it's kind of the kiss of death.  Your blockbuster of today has to be a PG-13; how close to an 'R' you are allowed to get depends probably mostly on the budget.  Take The Dark Knight, for example.  Some messed-up $#... stuff in there, just sayin'.  In case you didn't know.
For me, the plot gets a little too ridiculous at times.  Mostly the drama of a helicopter running out of fuel while trying to land Jack Ryan on the top of the American sub.  Then of course, there's the moment when Jack Ryan gets onto Sean Connery's sub, and the Americans and Russians team up to kick some Russian sub ass together... sorry, SPOILER ALERT.  Other than that, a fine sub-based drama.  Who doesn't like a good paradigm shift in their cinematic experiences?  In case you didn't know, the story is basically about the drama that unfolds when the Russians gain an advantage in submarine technology, able to slip and slide about under the sea undetected by NATO tracking equipment.
Now, I did happen upon the following "conspiracy" theory about Hunt for Red October (directed by John McTiernan) and the Die Hard series... at least, the installments directed by John McTiernan.  That one involves the involvement of one actor who plays roles in all of the movies.  I think I can do him one better.  In both Die Hard 1 and The Hunt for Red October, both involve a black nerd ("blerd"?  Am I allowed to use that term?) who's pivotal to the plot.  Fortunately, he's on America's team in Red October.  Both DH1 and Hunt have a scene where a guy's crawling around in a tight space, and doing sarcastic commentary to himself.  And did anyone else think that the big explosion at the end of Hunt (spoiler alert) looked a little bit like the big explosion in the middle of Die Hard 1 when Bruce Willis blows up the bad guys' big cache of explosives located in the middle of the building?  Guess I better go to my local video store and try to rent the two of them.  Sadly, my DVD collection's a little incomplete.  Also, I didn't use Microsoft SQL Server 2012 to catalogue it, so, sorry to the database nerds out there.  Those are the big three similarities that occur to me off the top of my head.  Not that McTiernan repeats himself that much.

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-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan