Following Tom Clancy’s recent demise, I was reminded on The Hunt for Red October. I’ve seen and liked the movie a few times, so now I got the e-Book onto my Kindle for only £0.99. At this price, I didn’t mind terrible spelling mistakes, according to one reviewer. (I noticed only a few.)
I enjoy the book even though I cringe at the truly terrible description of most technical details, particularly when it comes to computer technology. I guess this was pretty hard to imagine in 1984, fair enough.
I also watched the movie again. The movie condenses 440 pages into 135 minutes, so I expected some Hollywood-esque dramatization and simplification of the plot.
Well. well. well. I have watched movies for which I knew the book before, and generally find the book superior. Never before have I seen such a discrepancy though. It’s like someone read the book a long time ago, summarized if from memory within 3 minutes, and somebody else then turned this report into a movie script. Needless to say that the Americans can defend themselves in the movie, no need to call in the British allies.
I can only recommend that you read the book if you like the movie. While you’d quickly understand why Tom Clancy was never awarded the Pulitzer Price or Nobel Price for literature, it’s a good page-turner type of read. You can always mumble in your head whenever Sean Connery Captain Ramius speaks.