John McTiernan (Hunt for Red October) The Hunt for Red October (1990)
John McTiernan came to The Hunt for Red October with two of the defining action films of the 1980s already behind him: Predator (1987) and Die Hard (1988). What surprised the industry — and what almost surprises the film itself — is that he chose to follow them with a movie made almost entirely of men talking in rooms. The submarines barely move for the first hour. There is one extended chase in a canyon, one torpedo evaded, one pistol fired in anger. The rest is procedure, deduction, and listening.
A career built on architecture, not violence
McTiernan was born in Albany, New York in 1951 and trained at Juilliard's drama division and at the AFI Conservatory. His feature debut was the 1986 horror film Nomads, made for under a million dollars and shot in seventeen days. Predator followed in 1987 — Joel Silver's project, shot in the Mexican jungle with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the film that established McTiernan's eye for spatial logic in action. Die Hard in 1988 cemented it: the entire film is a problem of geometry, where every floor of Nakatomi Plaza is mapped and every elevator shaft, vent, and roof has a function in the plot.
"John McTiernan is one of the most underappreciated American directors. Die Hard and The Hunt for Red October and The Thomas Crown Affair are not just action movies — they are precisely engineered objects." — Steven Soderbergh, The Playlist (2018)
The architectural instinct carried directly into Red October. The film's tension is generated by spatial relationships: where Dallas is in relation to Red October, where Tupolev is in relation to both, where the torpedo will arm and where it will not. McTiernan storyboarded the submarine sequences as if they were rooms in a building.
The Treasure Island pitch
McTiernan's framing of the film was unusual. He did not pitch it as a Cold War thriller or a submarine procedural. He pitched it as a children's story.
"It's Treasure Island. The story of a boy who has to go off and find the scariest man of the sea on Earth, who turns out to be a sweet old bastard." — John McTiernan, Cinephilia & Beyond (2020)
The Treasure Island reading clarifies a lot about the film's tone. Ryan is the boy — junior, frightened of helicopters, nursing a wife and daughter at home. Ramius is Long John Silver, the legendary captain Ryan has only read about. The film is the journey from desk to deck, paper to person. McTiernan's casting and pacing all serve this reading.
"I wasn't going to make him pretend to talk in a silly accent"
When Klaus Maria Brandauer dropped out a week into production and Connery was approached, McTiernan made a single non-negotiable demand: Connery would not attempt a Russian accent. He understood that Connery's voice was an asset, not a problem to solve.
"The big thing to getting Connery was assuring him that I could get people to buy him as a Russian, and that I wasn't going to make him pretend to talk in a silly accent." — John McTiernan, Cinephilia & Beyond (2020)
The decision is the film's quietest masterstroke. Ramius speaks Russian briefly in the opening scenes, then the camera pushes in during the Putin scene and the language switches mid-sentence to English, with Scottish inflection. The convention is established once and never explained. McTiernan trusted the audience to accept it.
After Red October
McTiernan followed Red October with Medicine Man (1992), then Last Action Hero (1993) — a meta-comedy starring Schwarzenegger that was savaged on release and has since been reappraised as a strange and prescient piece of work. He returned to the Bruce Willis franchise with Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), then made The 13th Warrior (1999) and The Thomas Crown Affair (1999).
His career was derailed in the 2000s by a federal wiretapping case related to the private investigator Anthony Pellicano. McTiernan was convicted of lying to the FBI and served twelve months in federal prison from 2013 to 2014. He has not directed a feature film since Basic (2003).
"He was the last great craftsman of the 1980s blockbuster. Predator, Die Hard, Red October — three masterpieces in three years. And then a justice system that should have left him alone broke him." — Bilge Ebiri, Vulture (2018)
What he brought to this film
The signature McTiernan move in Red October is restraint. He had every tool available — a $30 million budget, full Navy cooperation, two practical submarines, five soundstages on hydraulic gimbals — and used them sparingly. The film opens with two men standing in the cold. It closes with two men standing in a river. The action that fills the middle is interrupted constantly by quiet scenes: Borodin's Montana fantasy, Ramius's reflection on forty years at sea, Ryan and Mancuso joking in the wardroom. McTiernan understood that the audience would care about the torpedoes only if it cared about the people, and the people only emerge in stillness.
"McTiernan is a great director of stillness. He shoots Connery sitting in a chair the same way he shoots a torpedo. The frame is composed, the lens choice is exact, the cut comes when it has to." — Walter Chaw, Film Freak Central (2018)