Review/Film: Patriot Games; Fear and Loathing on the Trail Of Evil in the New World Order

THE Queen of England owes a debt of gratitude to the makers of "Patriot Games," the sleek film adaptation of Tom Clancy's best-selling paranoid thriller. Their version of this story is so intelligently streamlined that it has the good grace to leave the Queen alone.

In Mr. Clancy's original, which revolves around a plot against the Prince of Wales and his young family, the heroic ex-C.I.A. agent Jack Ryan foils the attackers and becomes an instant celebrity on English television. For his trouble, he is not only knighted but also thanked ad nauseam by Her Majesty. So the Queen visits Jack's bedside and makes Jack and Cathy Ryan house guests at Buckingham Palace, gushing about the adorableness of the couple's little daughter, Sally. The Queen's husband treats Jack like a new chum. Their son, the Prince, listens gratefully to Jack's friendly advice about how to solve his marital problems and how to be more of a man. "We must see more of each other," the Prince declares. By the end of the novel, Jack has saved the Prince's life yet again and feels comfortable addressing him as "pal."

It is some measure of this film's good sense and relative probity that one generic royal cousin (played wryly by James Fox) has now been substituted for the book's improbable lineup of Ryan admirers. Much of the small talk and hubris has been excised from "Patriot Games," leaving just the bare bones of Mr. Clancy's political tug of war. On one side stand Jack, the sanctity of the American family and the remarkable ability of the C.I.A. to influence international events with the help of highest-tech surveillance gimmickry. On the other stand Irish terrorists who, in the absence of the kinds of cold-war villains who populated Mr. Clancy's "Hunt for Red October," are the author's best exemplars of the forces of anarchy and evil. Or at least they'll have to do.

Unlike the heartier "Hunt for Red October," which was directed by John McTiernan, "Patriot Games" takes a pensive, moody view of the intrigue in which Jack becomes embroiled. As directed by Phillip Noyce, an Australian, it has more in common with Mr. Noyce's meticulous, brooding thriller "Dead Calm" than with the earlier Clancy-based spy story. Mr. Noyce's approach is quite elegant (thanks in large part to Donald M. McAlpine's decorous cinematography and James Horner's mournfully lovely score), even if that sometimes seems peculiar in light of his material. The cool, sophisticated staging of a car chase through rush-hour traffic amounts to a cinematic oxymoron.

"Patriot Games" delivers the best possible version of a tale that boils down to nothing but gamesmanship, as its title implies. Except for a minor casting problem on the home front (Anne Archer, as Cathy, has become much too familiar in the role of the warm, ruefully sexy spouse), it concentrates on the string of elaborately staged ambushes that are this story's main attraction. For all its polish and its apparent global span, the film never really moves beyond the hollow question of whether the Ryan family will survive each new threat to life and limb. "You get him, Jack," snaps the once-serene Cathy, after an Irish terrorist makes a threatening call to the Ryan home. "I don't care what you have to do -- just get him."

From the attempted strike at the royals near Buckingham Palace to a two-pronged attack on the Ryans after they return to Maryland, the film moves chillingly toward one last, watery showdown that recalls the ending of Martin Scorsese's recent "Cape Fear." Lodged somewhere in mid-story is a remarkable and emblematic sequence in which coffee-drinking C.I.A. analysts, dressed in business suits, stand quietly watching abstract computer images. The eerily beautiful scenes shown on the monitor represent the flaming destruction of a terrorist training camp halfway around the world.

Despite its many violent episodes, the film remains bloodless. Perhaps that can be traced to Mr. Clancy's fascination with technology, and to his way of treating human characters only slightly less methodically than he treats machines. The Ryans are so generically happy, and the terrorists so generically bad, that it's a wonder Mr. Noyce can create any real tension or surprise. But he has cast the villainous roles particularly well; 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.

Mr. Ford's restrained performance is just right for this chilly atmosphere, and he even brings some earnestness to the happy-family scenes, which are otherwise saccharine. He makes a more plausible Jack Ryan than Alec Baldwin did in the earlier film, partly because this screenplay (by W. Peter Iliff and Donald Stewart) is less obsessed with technical jargon and high-tech toys. The devices that are used here -- an antennalike video camera that can creep under closed doors to do its spying, or the satellite technology that can scan a terrorist training camp from somewhere in space -- are gratifyingly unobtrusive. One exception is the infrared goggles that are critical to the story's final showdown, and wind up recalling "The Silence of the Lambs."

"Patriot Games" can be as readily watched for its subtext as for its main events. From the sign marking "Hanover Street" (one of Mr. Ford's earlier credits) to the portrait of John F. Kennedy on the wall at C.I.A. headquarters, marginalia often takes on unexpected prominence. One bit of trivia worth noting is that the authentic look of the Ryans' waterfront homestead on Chesapeake Bay was achieved only by digging up and later replanting 17 palm trees. This visual embodiment of Ryans' wholesome, traditional values is quite synthetic, and was shot in California.

"Patriot Games" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It includes violence and sexual situations. Patriot Games Directed by Phillip Noyce; screenplay by W. Peter Iliff and Donald Stewart, based on the novel by Tom Clancy; director of photography, Donald M. McAlpine; edited by Neil Travis; music by James Horner; production designer, Joseph Nemec 3d; produced by Mace Neufeld and Robert Rehme; released by Paramount Pictures. Running time: 113 minutes. This film is rated R. Jack Ryan . . . Harrison Ford Cathy Ryan . . . Anne Archer Kevin O'Donnell . . . Patrick Bergin Sean Miller . . . Sean Bean Sally Ryan . . . Thora Birch Lord Holmes . . . James Fox Robby Jackson . . . Samuel L. Jackson Annette . . . Polly Walker Adm. James Greer . . . James Earl Jones Paddy O'Neil . . . Richard Harris