The Hunt for Red October 30th Anniversary Steel Book 4K/Blu Ray Review (Paramount)
The Hunt for Red October was the world’s first exposure to the legendary Jack Ryan character when it came to film. It’s full of suspense, thrills, & heated tension. There’s some action in it but it’s more of a thriller than anything. Tom Clancy is known for all his books & video games but this was the original project that introduced everyone to his work. The script is top notch & it’s a great adaptation of the classic novel. I can see why so many talented people worked on this. It’s hard to tell who’s the hero & who’s the real villain in The Hunt for Red October. This is more of Marko Ramius’s movie than the popular Jack Ryan to be honest, I guess that’s why Harrison Ford originally turned it down. Sean Connery gives one of his best performances in Red October & it’s very rare to see him play villain in anything. Alec Baldwin was a great rival to him in this, it’s a shame that he didn’t get a chance to play Jack Ryan again after this. This feature has one of the greatest supporting casts ever which includes Scott Glenn, Sam Neill, James Earl Jones, Richard Jordan, Joss Ackland, Tim Curry, Courtney B. Vance, Sven-Ole Thorsen, Jeffrey Jones, Andrew Divoff, Peter Jason, & Timothy Carhart. Big or small roles, all these actors really boosted the overall quality for the production. They made a decent amount of submarine films back in the day but I personally think this is the highest quality one when compared to all the others. I’ve seen this so many times over the years, it has great replay value & it’s always a fun revisit. This definitely a different version of Jack Ryan when you look at all the other versions, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!!
Let’s talk about the high definition presentation from Paramount! This (2160p) transfer with Dolby Vision & HDR10 is the best that The Hunt for Red October has ever looked on home video. It’s a massive upgrade when compared to the previous blu ray release. Don’t expect reference quality for this older catalog title but it does look much better than anything in the past. It’s loaded with a variety of different audio options which includes German: Dolby Digital 5.1 Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1 French: Dolby Digital 5.1 Italian: Dolby Digital 5.1 Japanese: Dolby Digital 2.0, & Portuguese: Dolby Digital Mono on this UHD disc. This release sounds great! The dialogue is very clean, the thrills have a nice boost to them, & the music is elevated here. It also has English, English SDH, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Cantonese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Icelandic, Korean, Mandarin (Simplified), Norwegian, Slovak, Swedish, & Thai subtitles. Paramount once again delivers a top notch Technical release!!!!
