Marko Ramius: The Captain of Red October

Marko Ramius is a respected Soviet captain who commands Red October, a new ballistic missile submarine with a nearly silent propulsion system, in The Hunt for Red October (1990), directed by John McTiernan. In the credits he is Capt. 1st Marko Ramius, and the role is played by Sean Connery, who is billed second behind Alec Baldwin as Jack Ryan.

The film opens in 1984, when the Soviet Union launches the boat and Ramius sails out on its first patrol. Soon after, he sends off orders that change the mission, and the American submarine USS Dallas loses track of Red October. That one gap in the sonar picture is what pulls everyone else into the story: the Soviet leadership, the US Navy and a CIA analyst who happens to know the captain's record.

Think of Ramius the way you would think of the one driver in a street race who knows the engine better than anyone else on the grid. Everybody is reacting to his moves, and nobody can read his plan from the outside. That is the reason the film works as a puzzle, and it is also why he is the most talked about figure in the movie even though Ryan carries the lead.

If you are new to the saga, the Jack Ryan movies in order page shows where this film sits, and The Hunt for Red October is the place to start.

Ramius is defined by who trusts him, who hunts him and the one man who reads him correctly. That man is Jack Ryan, and the Ryan and Ramius pairing is the spine of the film. Ryan reads the captain's record and sees a defector where the Soviet Navy sees a threat. Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin share the final act, when the two men bring the submarine up the Penobscot River in Maine.

On the American side, Scott Glenn plays Commander Bart Mancuso of the USS Dallas, who has to be talked into finding Red October and setting up a meeting. James Earl Jones plays Vice Admiral James Greer. Richard Jordan plays Dr. Jeffrey Pelt, the National Security Advisor.

On the Soviet side, Joss Ackland plays Ambassador Andrei Lysenko, the figure who suspects an attack. Aboard Red October, Sam Neill is credited as Capt. 2nd Vasily Borodin, Tim Curry as Dr. Yevgeni Petrov, and Peter Firth as Capt. 2nd Ivan Putin, the political officer whom Ramius removes at the start of the voyage. Stellan Skarsgård appears as Capt. 2nd Viktor Tupolev, credited with the added name V.K. Konovalov.

For the full list of credited roles, see the Jack Ryan cast page and the broader Jack Ryan characters index.

In my opinion, the best Ramius scenes are the ones where he gets a job done in steps, and the film gives him three.

First is the faked reactor emergency. It is a clean piece of problem solving: Ramius needs his crew off the boat without a fight, so he uses the one alarm that nobody will question. It reads like a mechanic pulling a fuse to make a car look dead before anyone has a chance to inspect it.

Second is the moment when Red October's crew uses a bold maneuver to turn the Soviet hunter submarine's attack back on the hunter. The film saves its biggest underwater set piece for this point, and it is the payoff for all the time spent showing how quiet the new drive is.

Third, and my favorite, is the quiet beat at the end, when he and Ryan take the sub up the Penobscot River. After all the noise of the chase, the film ends the journey with the two men bringing the boat into Maine. It could be argued that this is where Sean Connery's calm, weathered performance does the most work.

If you want to see how the film stacks up against the rest of the saga, my Jack Ryan movies ranked page gives the full picture.