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Quotes

Marko Ramius: Forty years I've been at sea. A war at sea. A war with no battles, no monuments... only casualties.

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When Ramius is shot, he drops to the floor holding his wound with his left hand. He is still using his left hand when Ryan asks "What happens if he makes it to that ignition circuitry". The angle then changes, and Ramius is holding his wound with his right hand as he answers "He can incinerate the ship". New angle change, and Ramius is once again using his left hand on the wound. See more...

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The bear that Jack Ryan brings home to his daughter is the exact same bear Bruce Willis brings to his son in Die Hard (both films were directed by John McTiernan). See more...

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The Hunt for Red October (1990) - 33 corrections

Directed by John McTiernan, starring Alec Baldwin, Courtney B. Vance, James Earl Jones, Jeffrey Jones, Joss Ackland, Peter Firth, Richard Jordan, Scott Glenn, Sean Connery, Tim Curry (add more)

Genres: Action, Adventure, Thriller

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

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When we first see Sean Connery and Sam Neill, they're standing at the top of the Red October, looking out over the bleak Polijarnyj inlet, supposedly full of apprehension about the dangerous mission they're about to attempt. However, as Sam Neill says, "Pora tovarishch kapitan" ("It's time, Comrade Captain"), he's starting to smirk, and as the camera zooms back to focus on Connery's face, Neill cracks up completely and has to turn away. He partially regains control of himself after Sean Connery has said, "Nu, pora," and turns back to face the camera. What was he laughing about? Did they both feel funny about trying to speak Russian? [How is this a movie mistake? I make stupid jokes all the time to my boss to relieve tension, and we often have situations where we are trying (sometimes not very successfully) to control our mirth. Why should Russian sailors be any different?]
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The Dallas submarine chasing Red October uses a very sophisticated sound analysis to localize the Russian sub because of its silent drive system. Red October does not notice the Dallas with its conventional propeller drive at all, until it deliberately reverses the propeller at full throttle at close distance. The Red October is not (deliberately) deaf however: the aircraft dropping a torpedo is signaled from great distance, but not the Dallas surfacing and picking up Jack Ryan from a helicopter. Furthermore, "crazy Ivan" turns are made to be sure no sub is following them, yet the encounter with the Dallas comes as a surprise. [The American sub has much better sonar, and the Dallas is in fact extremely quiet, even if it doesn't have the caterpillar drive. Torpedoes splashing into the water from a plane would be easy to detect.]
Edit Corrected by Carl Fink
When Ryan is being lowered to the Dallas from the helicopter, and until he releases the line to drop into the water, the Dallas is moving forward leaving a wake. Yet when the camera shot changes to show Ryan floating in the water amid ship the Dallas, the Dallas is completly stopped. The Dallas could not have stopped instantly when Ryan hit the water, even if the captain could have ordered it that quickly. [The camera never shows the full submarine, thus we cannot see if the sub is moving or not. There is still wake coming off the sides, so it is entirely possible that the boat was still moving, but the viewer cannot tell because of the way the camera was positioned.]
Edit Corrected by Peter Vanicelli
All submarine movies contain 1 inherent factual flaw: even on a clear sunny day, if you're submerged in several hundred feet of water, you simply can't see; much less see items a hundred meters away. North Atlantic seawater transparency dissipates after about 100 feet of depth. [An underwater scene consisting of strictly black frames wouldn't be very interesting. This is simply a standard movie convention (along the same lines as sci-fi movies having sound in space and historical movies where everyone speaks colloquial English) and therefore cannot be considered a mistake.]
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Ryan says he doesn't know how long he has been without sleep because his watch is still on London time. If it's still on London time, then provided he can remember the simple fact of what time he got up the previous morning - which would also have been London time - shouldn't he know exactly how long it's been since he slept? [What he is saying is that lack of sleep is driving him crazy. Of course he knows how long it's been, when he says, "I don't remember how long it's been since I ..." is just an expression. He is making a joke about his watch being on London time, as if that explained his mental befuddlement. This is not a mistake.]
Edit
When Jack is chasing the cook in the missile area he climbs a ladder using both hands, in the next scene he flips himself onto a scaffold with a gun in his hand. [Actually the gun was tucked in the front of Ryan's pants, and when he lands on the scaffold he lands with one hand near his waist and immediately pulls the gun out.]
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How in the world did Captain Tupolev, the commander of the soviet attack sub, know where to locate the Red October and the Dallas? In the vast Atlantic Ocean, only a few people know the location of where the crew exchange would take place. If Tupolev knows where to find them, how come the rest of the Soviet Navy does not? [Because the Soviet Navy had sent submarines to all the major ports to stop the Red October. It was just luck that Tupolev was guarding Norfolk ( the destination of the Red October) Also, as Tupolev had been trained by Ramius he knew how Ramius thought.]
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As the Red October is being pursued by the torpedo dropped by the Russian Bear Foxtrot, Ramius (Sean Connery) orders "right full rudder, reverse starboard engine." to evade the torpedo. Immediately after Ramius gives this order, the scene cuts to a rear-aspect shot of the Red October from outside. The Red October is seen to be turning right, but both propellers are still turning in the same direction at the same speed. [Typhones had counter-rotating screws, that is while running "ahead" one screw would turn clockwise, the other counter-clockwise. So in a sharp turn and with one screw reversing it would be shown as both screws rotating in the same direction. But the point is moot, as it is shown incorrectly in several shots in the movie.]
Edit
When Jack Ryan briefs the National Security Advisor and the rest at the White House, he relays to them what he learned from Greer's report: that the Dallas had been following the Red October before it "up and disappeared." Yet later on, when Ryan is onboard the aircraft carrier, Ryan and his defection theory appear out of luck until he notices a solitary sub on the monitor, the Dallas. He asks the officer about the boat as if he'd never heard its name before, and is told that the Dallas had been reporting a magma displacement. Ryan then seems to put two and two together, and realizes the Dallas found the Red October. None of this makes any sense. Ryan already KNEW the Dallas had found the Red October. Greer told him. And the Dallas didn't report a magma displacement; the sonarman on the Dallas, Jones, had already identified it as a a Typhoon-class sub before it disappeared, at which point the computer identified it as a magma displacement. When Jones listened to the "magma displacement" at high speed, he heard the sound of doors opening, and deduces it must be a sub with a new silent propulsion system. Basically, Ryan knew enough to have gone straight out to the Dallas as soon as he left Washington. [In the elevator on the way down to the White House briefing, Greer tells Ryan "... the Captain of the sub we had following [the Red October] radioed in... thing up and disappeared in front of him...". Greer never actually refers to the sub or the sub Captain by name. Greer goes on to say "... and that's only the half of it.. read." at which point Greer hands Ryan the report. We know that the report refers to Soviet sub and surface ship deployments into the North Atlantic, because Ryan says ".. my God, the Kierov, the Minsk... the whole bloody fleet's after [the Red October]". It's unlikely that any reference to the USS Dallas would have been in that report, since the scope of the report appeared to be limited to Soviet naval activity. In any event, there is never any overt reference made to the USS Dallas at the White House briefing (which makes sense, since this would be an unecessary detail), or at any time thereafter in Ryan's presence, UNTIL Ryan is on the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier. On the carrier, Ryan notices on a video display that one US sub appears to be on it's own, away from the rest of the US fleet. Ryan is told by the fleet admiral (Fred Dalton Thompson's character) that the sub captain is following a "magma displacement", and has positioned his sub at the end of "Red Route One" in order to wait for the "magma displacement". Remember that on the USS Dallas, Seaman Jones had presented a theory to Captain Mancuso that the "magma displacement" is actually the Red October, but at that point, it was still just a theory. Fred Dalton Thompson's character didn't think much of the theory, he was in the middle of calling it "crazy", when Ryan interrupted with "... excuse me sir, could that "magma displacement" be mistaken for a seismic anomaly?" Remember that when Ryan was at the Patuxent Graving Docks talking with the Skip Tyler character, Ryan asked Tyler if the Red October's caterpillar drive would be detectable by sonar. Tyler replied that the caterpillar would be mistaken for whales humping, or "some other seismic anomaly". This is almost certainly what led Ryan to put "two and two together" on the aircraft carrier, and deduce that the "magma displacement" that the USS Dallas was waiting for at the end of Red Route One could actually be the Red October.]
Edit
The scene-setting type at the start of the film identifies the events as happening in November 1984.  However, the character Jack Ryan is dropped off at Heathrow Airport by a Range Rover clearly sporting a number plate identifying it as a 'C' registration car. 'C' registrations were not issued until August 1985. [The C plate on the range rover could be right,'C'plates were actualy issued on 1984/85 vehicles-depending when the vehicle was built/registered.]
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In the opening sequence, the name of the movie fades in with a seemingly expensive (by 80's standards) computer generated effect, first in Russian, then fades into English. Considering the money involved in making the movie and this shot, you'd think that they could have spelled 'Red October' right in Russian, rather than what translates as 'Octaver'. [The word 'Red' is all right (spelling, letters), the word 'October' is spelled right (Octiabr), only that it's written in Latin letters instead of Cyrillic.]
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Gates McFadden speaks with a British accent when addressing the off stage character about her daughter's bedtime rules, but in the next breath, speaks to her husband with no trace of any sort of accent. "...two bedtime stories, two glasses of water" - (with accent)..."Jack, you're going to miss your plane" - (no accent). [It is not unusual for people to be able to speak with different accents. Cathy Ryan has learnt the English accent and uses it when speaking to the locals, but reverts to American when speaking to Jack & other Americans.]
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In the scene where the Captain of the Dallas takes over combat maneuvering of the Red October from Ramius, he asks about the location of the counter measures. At this point in the battle no counter measures have been launched. [He's not asking where they are in the water, he's asking where the controls to launch the counter-measures are.]
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