Gooch- Patriot Games

Families have been described as the core to society, and the corner stone on which society is built. So how does one define such a powerful and important phenomenon? It is not necessarily marked by blood. It is a group of people whose individual members have come to define themselves and their path in life by their belonging to this group. This is the group that knows their every secret, and has most accepted them when no one else would. In the film, Patriot Games, families of all different origins and sizes play a crucial role in bringing emotion and intensity to the film. The involvement of families shows how the characters are so passionate. When the family is attacked, fear is lost and revenge and protection must be achieved at any cost. We see blood families, for example, in the Ryan’s, the royal family, and in Miller and his brother. There are institutional families in the group of Irish terrorists, and the FBI agency. The film consists of constant clashing between these families as they all take their turns passionately attacking and defending. While there are governments, agencies, and countries involved, in the end, it comes down to the interaction between two families that causes the struggle to begin and escalate until on is destroyed. Two of the main families are the Ryan family and Miller’s broken family. These two families could not be more opposite, and the family in which they belong defines each member’s place in life. The plot of the film results from the unexpected encounter between Ryan and Miller. When Jack kills Miller’s brother, the only family he has left, Miller will stop at nothing to destroy Jack’s family. So, of course, the attempted killing of Jack’s family must be the final step that brings the plot to a close. The perspective of the families allows the audience to look more deeply into the individual, and to see where he or she is coming from. Miller, for example, is not just a traitor to us, but someone who has been brought up in a violent family setting and has now lost the one person who defined his existence, the one person who made him human. Without his brother he was lost and desperate and had nothing to hold onto. So, by seeing his family upbringing and connections we see how his rage becomes so incredibly magnified to the point of delusion. Ryan took away his life and so he is determined to take away all that Ryan lives for- his family.