Bloo-Patriot Games

‘’Not for honor. Not for country. For his wife and child’’ is one of the teasers for Patriot Games. This perfectly sets the tone for the movie. The focus of attention in the movie is not political action but family in the broadest sense of meaning. There are several families in this movie. First of all, the traditional family is represented by the Ryan family and the Royal Family. However, both the CIA and the split group of the IRA function as non-nuclear families. I will focus on the Ryan family, the Miller brothers and the split group IRA who are important in creating the plot points.

In the beginning of the movie, Jack Ryan interferes with an IRA split group assassination attempt on relatives of the Royal family. Jack Ryan intervenes not only because the Royal family was attacked but also his family was threatened. During this interference, Jack kills Sean Miller’s younger brother. This sets the whole movie into motion. Devastated by his loss, Sean Miller’s focus becomes entirely Jack Ryan. Sean uses the split group to avenge his brother’s death. The split group could be considered as a family since they have helped Sean to escape and helped him in his attempt to kill Jack Ryan’s wife and daughter. However, Sean betrays ‘’his family’’ in that he is more interested in his own agenda namely killing Jack Ryan and his family than killing the Royal family. Sean even kills his own partners since they formed an obstacle in his pursuit for Jack. This shows that Sean is not completely loyal to his organizational family.

Jack wants to protect his family from Miller and this drives his actions. He does whatever he needs to do to protect his family even if this does mean that he has to rejoin the CIA. Jack thinks the CIA can offer his family protection while at the same time he uses the CIA to go after Miller after he has tried to kill his wife and daughter.