Ramon- Patriot Games

In Tom Massaro’s book “ Living Justice: Catholic Social Teaching in Action”, he indicates the nine key themes in Catholic Social Thought (CST). His claim is the importance of “family life.” In CST, family life is the central unit of society. The conditioning of persons is created and strengthened due to the family. Therefore, the future actions and world stability comes about due to the values bestowed upon offspring and values made clear to parental units by the actions of their offspring.

So, I would like to talk about Sean Miller’s relationship with his two families. The film is very much based on the hunter rather than the hunted. And in some respects, this film is more about Miller than about Jack Ryan. In Patriot Games, director Phillip Noyce puts a large emphasis on the importance of families, whether they are blood related or organizational. The difference between organizational families and blood families is a grey area in this film due to the actions of Sean Miller. Miller’s values come from his blood family and his organizational Family, the IRA. However, Miller breaks the barrier by killing off members of his organizational family in order to avenge the death of his younger brother (whom Jack Ryan killed during the failed assassination of the Royal Family). This leads into another point of Sean Miller’s ideals/Noyce’s debated message. Sean Miller made an attempt to assassinate the Royal Family, the symbol for the nation’s values, and he paid no regard to the lives of his IRA family when chasing after Jack Ryan. It seems to be that Sean Miller has some sort of edge against organizational families because they get in the way of what makes “him” which is the attachment to his blood family. My claim made about Noyce’s message, mediated through families in the plot, is such. Noyce believes that organizational families are detrimental to the individual’s values and bad for the blood family. From Jack Ryan’s relationship with the CIA to Sean Miller’s destruction of his organizational family, organizational families destroy the central unity of society.