Crimson Tide (1995)
What's This About?
SCOTTOBERFEST - Crimson Tide (1995)
Dive stations, Dudes! In this episode, Mike, Ruari and Saanje plunge into the 1995 Tony Scott thriller Crimson Tide. They navigate the film’s torpedo-loaded themes of leadership under pressure, toxic command culture, and what happens when two men with nuclear launch keys start arguing about Clausewitz and Lipizzaner stallions.
The hosts dissect the clash between Captain Ramsey (Gene Hackman) and Lt. Cdr. Hunter (Denzel Washington) — a philosophical showdown that’s equal parts “ethics seminar” and “angry dad energy.” They unpack how Crimson Tide turns a confined submarine into a boiling cauldron of pride, protocol, and passive aggression, all underscored by Hans Zimmer’s choir of doom.
Expect a deep dive into the film’s behind-the-scenes madness (Quentin Tarantino’s dodgy punch-ups!, The US Navy saying “nah, we’re good!”), plus a breakdown of how Tony Scott turned flashing red lights and sweaty close-ups into something approaching high art. Along the way, the Dudes examine the psychology of command, the ethics of military obedience and why it doesn't matter who the best Silver Surfer is.
Just when things get too heavy, it’s time for “You Don’t Know Jack” — the trivia game that pits Ruari and Saanje against each other in a battle of Baldwin confusion. Can they tell whether the quote came from Jack Ryan (Tom Clancy’s all-American analyst) or Jack Donaghy (30 Rock’s suit-clad philosopher of capitalism)?
Subscribe, review, and remember: we’re here to preserve democracy, not to practice it. 🎖️
Next week on Clear and Present Dudes: Tony Scottoberfest continues with 2010's Unstoppable.
Keywords: Crimson Tide, Gene Hackman, tribute, Denzel Washington, movie analysis, Tony Scott filmography, submarine thriller breakdown, military leadership lessons, U.S. Navy realism, nuclear launch protocol explained, Hans Zimmer score, Quentin Tarantino uncredited rewrite, You Don’t Know Jack game, Jack Ryan vs Jack Donaghy, Tom Clancy universe, Clear and Present Dudes podcast, best 90s action movies, mutiny in movies, Cold War thrillers, leadership under pressure, movie podcast UK, film analysis comedy podcast.
Gains represent a clear and present danger of national
security of the United States. You have no idea.
What bit of welcome back to the clear and present dudes, the
podcast where I expect and demand your best.
Anything less, you should have joined the Air Force.
Cool. Thank you for joining.
I'm Mike Sabah. I'm joined here with my good
friend Rory James O'Toole. Hello, currently down in the
sonar room for those of you who want watching on videos.
I'm letting those green hues that are standard issue for any
ICBM submarines solar room apparently.
And Sonya Bjergsen joining us from his new digs and his new
accommodation over in Hamburg. Yeah.
Come on everyone, unfortunately I can't offer any interesting
colour use at the moment. I'm afraid we've switched to
daylight OPS rooms. So welcome to episode 10 of
Clear and Present Dudes. And we are covering the 1995
movie Crimson Tide. Hence why I've left myself in
submarine control room Crimson. Thank yous to all the people
who've been listening and rating and commenting and all that good
stuff Allows us to keep doing what we're doing.
So that's, that's brilliant. Before we tackle the movie this
week, Rory O'Toole, I've got to ask you a question.
How are you getting on with Tom Clancy's The Bear and the
Dragon? Good.
Grief. We're close to the end game on
it. The The Road to War phase has
drawn to an end, and now what's beginning is a word or a phrase.
I don't know if it's one word or if it's hyphenated or if it's
two words because it's an audio book.
Hyper War. I don't know if I love it, I
hate it, but it's but the concept of hyper war is
referenced multiple times, which which you never quite got an
answer as what the meaning of hyper war is, by the way.
But to basically, when last we left off, the Chinese were
preparing for their incursion into Russia for a resources grab
of the oil and gold newly found in Siberia.
The Russians had joined NATO with like 00 protests from any
other members of NATO. President Jack Ryan.
Sorry, President Tom Clancy. No, sorry president, President
Jack Ryan, right. He's he's like, this is his
unilateral wet dream. Russia's in NATO, that's it.
The Chinese invade Russia led by this general.
He smokes at least 60 cigarettes a day.
And and that's mentioned in the book.
Now, I think that Tom Clancy's smoking habit was actually part
of the the circumstances around the divorce he was going through
because his book is incredibly divorced because President Tom
Clancy throughout the entire of the book keeps like bumming the
occasional cigarette off his secretary.
And then there's like this, this bad guy, he was like Marshall
whatever, lit the 60th cigarette of the day.
And it's like Tommy sees like, see, I'm not that heavy a
smoker. President Jack Clancy isn't that
bad a guy. He's just occasionally bombing
them and hiding them from his bitch wife.
The Chinese go into Russia. They they have their incursion
against like the Russian forces that cross the border into
Siberia. And this is when it goes in a
real like Tom Clancy just going back into writing about land
wars in Granny Ladidia like you did with Red Storm Rising.
It's lost like a lot of the weird kind of horny aspects of
like the preamble when that Japanese American CIA agent was
romancing A Politburo secretary and she kept don't say it.
He's going to say it. You're going to say it.
Go on, just say it. Jade sausage, there we go, no
more. And in in like the final kind of
bit of like diplomacy before the balloon kind of goes up.
There's just because, to be honest, the combat's kind of
cool, but it's not funny to talk about and the diplomacy aspect
of it is. So when you're the president of
America, right, and China has a lot of your people living in
obviously for business, maybe the visiting family, there's a
concern that they're going to be kind of hostages to a hostile
state, right? Ryan just sends the Chinese
government a diplomatic note saying he's going to use pave
way guided munitions on all of the Chinese government.
If any American citizens in India, what once the war kind of
begins in earnest as well, There's there's a scene when
like President Ryan tries to phone the Chinese premier, right
to like to like tell him, hey, man, knock it off, comrade.
But this is like, that's like Chinese president, right?
He's this guy who was elected because he was hot, like he was
a himble like, and he's just like dumb guy who was elected
because he's a good looking dude.
And he like does does anything the Politburo say.
So someone just tells him, I'll just tell the president that
you're not in. And so the president of the
United States of America phones what whatever the presidential
palace is called in Beijing speaks to switchboard operator.
He was like, no, he's not in he's meeting the people.
And then he that like the contact the US Embassy in be
showing in the like, can you check if the Chinese presidents
lights are salon like, yeah, his lights are still on.
His legs are still not bad. It is.
It's nuts. That's insane.
That reminds me of this week of of Donald Trump getting Benjamin
Netanyahu on the phone and getting him to apologise to the
the Prime Minister of Qatar for launching those missiles into
Qatar. Good grief.
It's just like, yeah, that's that is diplomacy that I guess
that's diplomacy. I guess you're doing something
about it. It's like, listen here man.
I want you to say sorry to this guy.
Don't. Don't do it again, Benjamin.
I'm broadly content with the genocide so far, but please stop
that. This one specific thing, please
knock it off. So yeah, I think, I think the
next episode we're going to see the final installment of the of
this hyper war that's happening so.
Hyper War What's that 100 * 100 times Mega war?
Type this mega war. It's not quite it's not quite
giga war. It's war, but with more clouds
of it. Very good, right.
We're capitalising on that very good segue of the.
From, from from. Clausewitz OK, right guys, today
we are talking about Thank you Rory for your summary of a Bear
and the Dragon. We are talking today about
Crimson Tide, the 1995 movie directed by Tony Scott, starring
Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman, sets during a period of
post Sylvia's turmoil. The film follows AUS nuclear
missile submarine SSBN facing a dire's dilemma.
Should they launch their new when the critical messages cut
off mid transmission? It's a high stake clash of wills
which you know experienced and warriors hell Captain Ramsey
Gene Hackman and his new thoughtful executive officer
Denzel Washington guy. Should we just plunk on the old
trailer as? You no doubt heard my ex OS
appendicitis. Your name was at the top of the
list. Oh that's good to know Sir.
It was shortlist travel in Russia, so they called us and
we're going over there and bringing the most lethal killing
machine ever devised. The last time we hit this state
of emergency was 32 1/2 years ago during the Cuban Missile
Crisis. So this is what it's all about,
gentlemen. It's what we train for.
Emerge the ship. Diving officers remerge the
ship. Make a depth 150 feet on.
The one MC dive dive. We have a properly formatted
emergency action message from National Command authority.
What we've always known, BEECA becomes what we've always
feared. Telling this to the captain,
Russian rebels have threatened to launch against our country
and are fueling right now. This is not a drill, no.
So we have a possible submerged submarine you.
Find out who that is receiving emergency action message.
Recommend alert one. The battle for survival begins.
That's a message fragment, so we don't know what this message
means. Our target package could have
changed. I've made a decision.
There's no place for fear. He's lost his nerve.
I'd rather go on myself and get this one wrong.
There's no room for mistakes. If we launch and we're wrong,
what's left of Russia is going to launch at us.
I'm captain of this boat. I don't think that's over.
There's no time for doubt. Missile systems ready to launch
in 6 minutes. You repeat this order, or I'll
find somebody who will. Don't know You won't, Sir, and
nothing can stop the tide 1. 1000 yards of closing time
making. We cannot launch our missiles
unless both you and I agree they're fueling our missiles.
He's not on. Top of us on the charge of
mutiny, block Captain Ramsey's in his State room.
Give. Me the missile key, Mr. Hunter.
Sir, we are going down. I'm the commander of this ship.
Crimson Tide, I've got to help you if you're wrong.
If I'm wrong, then we're at. War it's a good trailer.
Man, that's such a good trailer, isn't it?
That is a good. Trailer how Douglas did the
voice over on that trailer. He's the guy I talked about a
few episodes ago. Did like a zillion voices get it
for five trailers? Awesome.
Some things like trailer like immediately pop out and that
we'll talk about. So the external shots of the
submarine. I'll talk about that in a bit in
the in the trivia. The one thing you heard a lot of
if you were listening to this and you didn't see it was was
shotguns getting cocked. Yeah.
How many shotguns do you need on SSBN?
How many? How many firearms in general do
you need? It was wild.
Yeah, we meant in like a juicy watch on board submarines when
they're alongside and they are armed with the SAAT rifle, as is
every quartermaster in the RN when they're holding a watch.
But shotguns, the only time you've ever seen shotguns on
board ships I'm aware of is when they're on as a private weapon
for clay pigeon gene, which is surprisingly common.
It's. Pretty best.
I was just going to make a dumb joke and say clearly at least
one of the the S and SSPN stands for shotgun.
Like. Shotgun, submersible, ballistic,
Nuclear. I mean, I wonder if like, I
mean, I wonder if like there's an element, if you know, those
like just insane stories of like submarine warfare in World War
One, like like Dodd Nell's kind of actions and stuff and
submarines like, ah, we're going to pull up on some random beach
and put a boarding party you show and they're going to
destroy a train, that kind of thing.
I wonder if like Captain Captain Gene Hackman's prepared for all
eventualities, you know, got significant amounts of of
shotguns in case they need replace the Olympic skeet
shooting team. I mean, I mean, you know, if if
there's no more like society, but the SSBNS all survived due
to the fact of the nuclear the world out Marisk America has
still got to have like the best skeet shooting team, right.
So there you go. That's it.
Yeah, I. Suppose the limit is that
they're obviously taking the SSBN all the way to Russia,
apparently going to the trailer, which is seems a bit Newt when
you've got a try to missile cable of covering 6000 miles.
But yeah, no, let's just park them outside the front.
Dawn of it. They're going to tilt right down
and they were really low trajectory shot.
That'll that'll show them. It's coming in under the radar.
The ICBM identifies as a Tomahawk for this film.
Before we get before we get like super into pointing out all the
goose and stuff. I think I think the starting
precepts of this movie is is that it was made without the the
cooperation of the United States Navy because they quite rightly,
I suppose, were pretty concerned about the depiction of
submarines this way. The idea that you could put a
submarine to see and have a meet me on board, all that kind of
stuff. The movie was made well any
assistance from the US Navy apart from like one retired guy
who I guess got like didn't get listened to very much because
there's a there's a raft of in inaccuracies and so on that one
I'm sure we'll we'll pour into as you go through the movie.
Released in May 995, Crimson Tide arrived in theatres as a
taut post Cold War thriller produced by the powerhouse and
alleged cocaine fueled duo Don Simpson and Joey Bruckheimer,
who were the guys behind Days of Thunder, Top Gun, Etcetera and
also Tony Scott at the helm. So again, Days of Thunder, Top
Gun, Deja Vu, Man on Fire, Enemy of the State.
So yeah, awesome. The film's title is a slight nod
to the USS Alabama submarine, which it's set because the
University of Alabama's football team is called the Crimson Tide.
The story unfolds amidst political chaos in Russia.
An ultra nationalist threatens to takes control of a nuclear
missile facility and threatens to launch nuclear missiles, a
little bit like Tom Clancy's Op Centre.
And the USS Alabama is sent on a patrol armed with its own
nuclear arsenal. And it then receives A partial
ambiguous EAM emergency action message during a hostile
encounter with an Akula. The captain wants to launch the
missiles. The EXO Denzel Washington
doesn't want to launch the missiles.
And the adoption dictates that they both must agree.
But the captain doesn't like that.
So, you know, madness ensues. As I mentioned, directed by Tony
Scott, written by Michael Schiffer, who did a little
writing on Call of Duty Games and The Peacemaker, which is
another movie that deals with the stray ball of a of a nuclear
missile and Richard P Henrik, and this is his only real
credit. This guy got some uncredited
dialogue punch UPS by Quentin Tarantino, which is really
obvious when you when you when you start looking for it.
Cinematography was done by a guy called Darius Wolski, who's done
a lot of work with Ridley Scott, notably Alien, Covenant, The
Martian and Napoleon. He also did that weird fly me to
the moon movie that came out this year on Apple TV.
Plus I was Chang Taysom and Scully Johansson where they
faked the moon landing. But it's a backup plan for in
case the Mulan doesn't really work.
The contacts of the movie came out in the mid 90's.
The Hollywood were obsessed with the end of the Cold War at this
time and trying to find who the new bad guy would be.
At this time we had we had the the Russian Chechnya war in 994
which kicked off the air. Prior Bosnia was going on still
990-2995 reception box office got about 157 million worldwide.
I think it really would really well got 3 Oscar nominations for
editing sound and for visual effects.
And I think that's fair enough because it holds up to this day,
I think in those regards. And it's sort of, I would say
set the gold standard for, for mutiny at sea dramas in the
modern era. And it's still used in in ethics
classes in naval colleges to this day.
It's a it's a pretty iconic movie, despite the fact that as
we're going to go into, it's got a bunch of kind of goofs.
Some of them I think fair enough for the purposes of making the
movie entertaining and easy to pass for the the lay person.
Some of them less so, a bit more ridiculous and you a little bit
insulting to people's intelligence.
Yeah. Should we should we get into?
Well, there's a lot of intro from me.
I'm sorry, shall we get into the plot beats?
I will start with the beginning. So the first thing we see is a
reporter reporting from the French aircraft carrier FOC.
They're talking about how this ultra nationalist has seized
this nuclear facility and how the And then it cuts to the chat
with Gene Hackman doing the interview for his new EXO.
Of the scenes on the fog, I was like, I wonder if this film
wasn't endorsed by the US Navy. But doesn't mean.
Yeah, Yeah. So I didn't think too much after
that. It's funny.
That's a French aircraft carrier, I thought.
I wonder if they didn't have the tacit support of the US and if
this one, clearly they don't. I've noticed it like thriller
media and products in the 90s always have CNN as kind of gold
standard news establishment of CNN guy on on the French ship.
It's circling back. It's the CNN news team in, in
the Baron the dragon who filmed those Chinese cops killing the
people Nuncio in that maternity suite and and swinging out was
like when, when, when you see the stick that CNN gets from
from a certain orange toned guy and and all of the people around
him. It's wild to say that like CNN
at one point was like shorthand in storytelling terms.
This is believable news, and now it's fake news, obviously.
Yeah, is like the gold stand, isn't it?
So that the journalist is a guy called Richard Valeriani playing
himself. He was a White House
correspondent in the 60s and 70s.
He got his, he cut his teeth. He spoke 5 languages.
He died in 2018. He spoke 5 languages.
And he cut his teeth in his career by covering the Bay of
Pigs invasion Cuba. So he's a, he's like a real guy.
The the ship for the ship. Spot on nerds is a Clannon soil
class as the second of its type. Fess Fok seemed after Ferdinand
Fok, who was a highly decorated field March on World War One
launched in 1959, sold to the Brazilian Navy in 2025 years
after this, and then she was sadly scuttled in 2023.
So now she's, you know, a bit of a coral reef for fish off
Brazil, sadly, but yeah. We don't have any listeners in
Brazil yet and I hear that because I want to get those come
to Brazil posts. Yeah.
Would it like me to come to Brazil?
Yeah. I want I want I want to get
those like come to Brazil and do do a live show posts.
I really do. And I was going to kind of get a
little bit really about stock footage that they used to like
narrate the the like the the whole rise of the ultra
nationalists and the start of this war.
It's like, oh, we have to drop off JB 233 musicians can
frigging Apaches. It's like this video of Russian
planes, this video of Heinz out there.
It's like, come on, man, spend spend about 5 minutes in the
freaking video library and find find something that at least
matches with what you're saying. But that's that's in fact, no,
it is it is it is kind of glaring.
It is really glaring how, I mean, my back was up at the
scenes in The Sum of All Fears when they're doing those
precision strengths on a Russian air base and it's clearly AC130
getting hit. But that's like a few seconds of
film. And this is like establishing
shots and it's giving us the it's giving us the lore of
what's going on. It's like, get the get the
equipment right, man. I felt instilled, it insulted.
The thing is though, like if you if you, you think about this in
terms of like 1995, like there weren't as many nerds on the
Internet, like, like pouring over this kind of stuff, like
Jane's is an incredibly expensive obligation.
So, you know, the people who are who would have known by a
glance, You know, I learned most of this from video games, like
I, I like in the late 90s. Yeah, I I knew behind The Who
come and everything was because I played Jane's Apache Longbow.
Counterpoint though, this is all like news footage.
This is all like stock footage from the news.
This is tough. People would have seen like 4
years previous. The footage of of of Apaches is
from Iraq. Yeah, I wonder.
Literally the opening beats, the Gulf War, iconic footage of the
Apaches, all have a firing and a gun line kind of thing.
People people would have a lot of people would have seen this
just a few years prior. So I do think it is kind of lazy
storytelling. And I mean, I'm going to sound
like a bit of a Dick, but. They'd been a pretty well
photographed Chechen war. You could have had footage of
Heinz and stuff. Yeah.
It was ongoing though. I mean, that's the, I mean,
that's the rub, isn't it? Yeah.
But at the end they have they have footage that PSP from
Chechnya. That's true, yeah.
I was going to say they they do manage in the end.
Maybe that's the the 5 minutes more of research they they have
by then. Yeah.
We'll fix it and pause. We'll fix it and pause.
They did not fix it in person. They did not fix in post.
So the next thing we get after that is Captain Ramsey, Gene
Hackman. That's the cigar chomping Elder,
elder statesman, old and bold, interviewing for his next EXO.
He's he's lost an EXO to appendicitis, although it's
heavily implied that he drove, drove him away for a clash of
personalities. And he's interviewing Lieutenant
Commander Hunter, who was Denzel Washington.
And also present there is the chief of the boat played by
George Desunde. We get a little bit of an
initial kind of view of their different personalities.
So, you know, Gene Hackerman's a straight shooter.
He doesn't care if what he says offends you.
He's not like one of your hoity toity educated Navy boys who's
done time in Harvard. He killed the hard way and is a
blunt instrument. And he's what the Navy wanted in
the 1970s. And is he still?
Is he still relevant now? Vice Hunter, who's allergic,
educated and obviously thoughtful, but there's also an
up and Comer and there's a high flyer, hence why he's in in the
runner for this interview. We also meet Gene Hackman's dog.
Let's just get that elephant out out of the room.
It's a weird so like they hand wave it by saying that it's just
a weird quirk that and it's maybe like a tool to show how
influential and how highly regarded as a as an effective
operator that Ramsay is that he's allowed to have this weird
eccentricity of having a dog on board and allowed is a thing
that's mad though, like oh, just makes them seem a bit
ridiculous. I mean that in the fish tank
it's like what is this was arc? Ryan Philippe's fish tank?
How is Ryan Philippe allows of a fish tank?
I understand the captain getting away with having something
mental like that, but like right Like it was a fish tank in the
middle of the junior eights mess.
What's going on? Did you not have a fish tank in
your mess? I think that might genuinely be
a bit of a like a fuck you to the US Navy for not not like
support on the production of the movie, which is like, fine.
We're going to show you guys having a second.
Your buddies are breed then. That is an incredibly good call
because the Alabama is portrayed as a little bit of a party boat.
What do you think about what there's there's, there's like
there's a guy with a fish tank. The captain cuts around with
this little dog peeing on things.
There's there's there's just dudes dancing the soul music in
in the in in like the caverns and stuff.
But it's like it's like this service a non serious vessel.
It's like. Yeah, that's weird as well.
Yeah. So I'm not a submarinance, but I
am. But I have been on on ships in
various noise quiet states. Seems to me like right.
So an SSPN exists for has has 2 has two functions, right.
OK, so it's obviously it's a Terran, it's a nuclear
deterrent. So so to do that, it has to go
to effect missing, you know, like missile release.
The other thing that has to do is not to be detected.
So the one thing that they're pretty pretty anal about is is
maintaining a noise quiet state when they're on patrol.
And I get the impression that this captain doesn't, you know,
doesn't mess about when it comes to this kind of thing.
And neither should the high flying super duper all over it
XO and neither should the old and bold salt looking for the
boat who is a sticker for the rules.
It just I don't know. So yeah, you're right.
It's a bit of a weird party boat.
I guess it's been a show like for morale, the contrast, it's
happy now. It's not going to be happy
later. That's that's that's show
everything starting off on a good foot and then turning sour.
Whereas if it's super serious to begin with, maybe it maybe you
don't get that communicated to you.
But there are moments when it doesn't even get as super
serious as a submarine film normally would like, for
instance, all the times when the the kind of I'm I'm not sure the
modern terminology, but from playing a lot of silent hunter
when when the rig for silent runner, there's there's still a
significant of quite loud dialogue and people are moving
around noisily and stuff. And it's like, you know, it's
like, what do you think? Like films like hunt for October
on this freaking silence man. And then it's like, hey, guys
are partying just a little bit less.
Yeah, yeah. So.
It's a chill out room. Yeah, so we'll we'll get into
that into your course When when when that kicks off.
But yeah, you're right. There is never any point in this
movie. The like the the noise quiet,
stay elevating even when they're like in direct contact with an
Akula class hunter killer. Yeah, crazy.
The next thing is a quite short scene where the captain briefs
the officers and senior rights in a separate room about what
their mission's going to be. Basically to lay it out for us,
the audience, what they're going to go off and do.
And then there's a few introductions made.
The next thing after that is the crew is amassed a mustard in
front of the boat in the absolute pissing rain.
Gene Hackman as Captain Ramsey gives a big policy broadcast to
the ship's company as well about what's going to happen.
And whilst I've got a lot to say about Gene Hackman's leadership
style, this this, this opening chat actually isn't that bad.
This is actually pretty good. Like he's got a rough away
button and he says some things up, maybe are not PC these days.
But in terms of in terms of laying out what's he expects
from the crew and what they can expect from him, be pretty
clear. Pretty good.
Got that message pretty loud and clear.
We're going to go do a real job. Step up to your A game.
If you don't do your A game, I'm going to kick your ass and get
you into shape. Fair enough, I think.
But what we also see is that Gene Hackman as Captain Ramsey
has got a pretty toxic leadership style and it's
filtering down to his offices. So it's one of one of the scenes
that Quentin Tarantino's dialogue punch up has given us.
There's a scene in a in a bus, presumably between that briefing
space to the boat, whether all the officers are are talking.
Some of the enlisted guys are getting on the same bus.
Anyway, they are discussing various classic submarine movies
and who was in them. So they talk about Run Silent,
Run Deep. I think they get some of the
trivia deliberately wrong, but they're doing that.
And then you meet James Gandolfini's character, right?
This is where I'm going with this.
And then another sailor comes on board and he's a bit rotund.
How shall we say Jim's Gandolfini essentially bullies
him? So he starts like screaming and
I'm like, you've got me, Sir. He addressed me as an officer,
blah, blah, blah, blah. And he said get him that
grounded, give me 20, blah, blah, blah and just just gives
him a little shit for like no reason.
Now we can talk about the realism of of whether you'd get
a submariner of that of that build.
Bear in mind he has to go to a skid for a kidney hatch.
So I was so as I signal, I'm talking too much already, but
yeah, you. So I'll end that point.
Basically Jim Scandolfini is like seen one as a bit of a twat
and is is is indicated to us early that he's going to be a
heel, I think in this movie on the subjects of of toxic
leadership. I'm going to do a quick plug for
a book that I think is fantastic called Turn the Ship Around by L
David Marquette, who was the CEO of he's a, he's a, he's like a
leadership speaker now. He does like events and things
and Ted talks and what kind of stuff nowadays and writes books.
But, and he's prior career as a submariner in the US Navy.
He was the commanding officer of USS Santa Fe as one of his
boats, which is a Los Angeles class SSN.
Yeah, I don't want to spoil the book too much, but basically
what happens is he inherits his boat after the previous CEO's
removed. And the boat in question has
like the worst rates of reenlistments for its junior
rates, worst rate of junior rates or ratings commissioning
up to the officer class and all that kind of stuff.
And it's just generally performing pretty poorly.
He's got a pretty short timeline in order to get it ready for
live OPS and it goes through like the changes you made
basically creating like a rather than a leader follower culture
like a a leader leader culture has waste what he calls it.
He's basically empowering is probably the wrong word because
it implies you have power that you get to somebody else.
But but you encouraging, I suppose some more positive
leadership from from the petty officers and the chief petty
officers and all the people who have been told for the naval
career that they're in charge of the boat.
But I've never had to experience it because on that that
particular craft, it was the officers pretty much top down
leadership to the point where like the exo had to like approve
every single leave request that kind of that kind of nonsense.
Anyway, that's a really good book.
Should definitely check it out if you're interested in military
leadership, any any form. I found it really useful in my
career and yeah, really good anyway.
I'm still stuck on on the noise noise state thing because they
were going on about like singing and partying and and when we
brought that up mentally and compared it to other submarine
movies, I just had not that scene from Honda for Red October
in my head where the sonar guy goes.
I heard singing. I'm just currently picturing
like the user status just right next to the Alabama.
What are they? Doing I love.
It new Jack swing. You just make it.
All the boats, including one way out of Carl.
The scene when James Gandolfini just starts be racing that lad
and gets it would do push ups while while making them answer
questions about submarine film trivia.
It's like Mr Tarantino, I can see your handiwork the.
Problem is right. It's like the problem with
Quentin Tarantino is you can tell his writing a mile off.
Yeah. Because it's always about pop
culture and, and shit like that. Yeah.
When he, when he, when he's doing his iconic dialogue stuff.
And that works OK. If it's like quirky characters
that, you know, you don't need to necessarily know about.
Like, if it's like criminals, criminals come in all shapes and
sizes in All in all on all forms, right.
So you can write whatever you want.
You can make a criminal any character you want because all
sorts of people are criminals. But like people in the military
are kind of like, there's a, there's a, there's a, a language
there. There's a vernacular.
There's like a, yeah, the way it kind of goes, and I didn't, it
didn't ring true to me for them to be that way.
Don't be wrong. There's a, there's a huge, like,
again, there's a big variation of people in the military as
well, but there's like things that just wouldn't happen.
And I just don't think that would have happened without
being without that itself becoming an incident, you know
what I mean? Yeah, it's so something I
recently found out was that apparently there was a bit of a
confrontation on, on on the set between Denzel Washington and
and Tarantino. Apparently Denzel Washington had
a bit of a go at Quentin Tarantino due to like people
using the N word in his films. And also apparently I've seen
some posts on on Reddit, which isn't obviously the the best
place to go for knowledge, but it's a good place to go to kind
of see what a lot of people are talking about.
And apparently there's some, there's there's some story that
Quentin Tarantino's script punch up added a lot more of the
racial stuff as well with with with Gene Hackman's character
and the racial tensions. And yeah, apparently Denzel
Washington was not happy. And apparently he apparently he
demanded Tarantino kind of answer to his, to his crimes.
And, you know, say, can we can we, can we talk somewhere
quietly? And Denzel Washington, who I
imagine was still a little bit of character.
I was like, no, I want to talk in front of all the cast of the
crew. Yeah.
But yeah, like, it's the match. Like Quentin Tarantino walk on
set and he's like, you know, God, submarine wouldn't work if
I was in charge. Where's the dancing?
Where's the fights over the Silver Surfer?
Anybody's feet? That's.
What's going on? What's going to say this option
doesn't have enough bare feet in it?
Exactly. Where's Pam Grier?
Where is Pam Grier? Any pretty much any films made
by by the presence of Doctor Pam Grier.
We have that scene in the wardroom where the officers are
all together. They keep calling it the
officers mess in the movie. By the way, it's a wardroom.
Even in the US Navy, it's a wardroom.
They're having like coffee. They're having a a discussion
about and called on close wits and it's another character
establishing moment here between, you know, roof and
ready blunt instrument Ramsey and oh namby pamby thinky boy
hunter Denzel Washington. And they have that classic that
classic closures for that every single officer in the in the in
the Navy across the world of disgust, which is, you know, war
is the extension of politics by other means, that kind of thing.
And they discussed that and Hunter has his kind of stance,
which I think is the fracture in their relationship.
The first Fisher forming, which is when Hunter says that the the
true enemy in nuclear war is war itself.
And which tells tells Ramsay that maybe this guy has not got
the stones to launch the nukes when he needs to because he was
obviously doesn't want to do nuclear war.
That doesn't deviate, by the way, from from EU SS actual
policy. Nuclear war really like, like
it's built on the founding principle of of deterrence.
So you amass nuclear missiles so that you may have to use them
one day, but you don't really intend to use them.
It's just about the fact they've got so many of them, your town,
the world that you know, it would be stupid if you to try
and do it. It's the classic mutual mutual
issue of destruction stuff. And so I don't know why Gene
Hackman gets annoyed about it. But what he does get annoyed
about is, and he has that really cool line about it is like when
I went to the Naval Academy, it was metallurgy and nuclear
engineering and they taught me how to get to the right place,
the right time, right rig, fire weapon.
And it seems like they want you to know why.
Yeah. And it's like he, he is very
much like you said, like he's like a blunt instrument.
He he's he's he seems even to we got to be like just nuke and
everything and it's and it's a bit wild.
It could be argued that maybe he's starting to sundown a
little bit. You know, maybe he's, maybe he's
getting a bit of the old man shot kicking in.
I don't know if it's dementia. He's obviously, he's obviously
like a really intelligent guy. You can't be the the commanding
officer of a of a SSBN without being actually really
intelligent. Yeah, yeah.
You know, he's, he's, he's, you know, he's got like you have
the, the mental arithmetic and all that sort of the tactical
strategic thought. He's all, he's actually probably
selling himself a little bit short actually, because he has,
he has to have a lot more about him.
Yeah, like he kind of, he kind of acts like a bit of a dumb
ass, doesn't he? Take it away, Vaughn kind of
thing. And it's like he's, he's kind of
like lowering himself a little bit to like look like more of a
kind of tough guy. But you're right.
I mean, he's going to be an intelligent dude.
And like you said, he's he's studied mythology.
He studied like nuclear stuff from that.
So he's not a dumbass. Yeah, I think, I think where
what's less plausible or if, if we have to imagine a world where
someone like him has made it to the commanding officer position
of an SSBN, where where trips I think is probably
psychologically so. And I and I again, right.
This is a difficult thing because I don't know many
American SSPN captains. Okay so this is me just
speculating. I do know captains of of Royal
Navy nuclear submarines. I've been on courses with some
of them before and in my experience, yeah, they they
might talk a bit of a talk that Ramsay does, but they're
actually all extremely thoughtful people and they're
all extremely intelligent and they all ask the questions about
why we're doing these things now.
I appreciate that this movie is set 30 years ago.
So. So there was a bit of a bit of a
cultural difference, but I don't think, I don't think it's would
have changed that much. I think, I think if you ask
anybody about submarine warfare, they'll tell you that it's a
thinking man's game. It's a battle of minds.
And you can't be able to instrument because you'd be
detected. Basically, if you, if you are
stupid enough to think that, all you have to do is, you know,
never mind the movement is go straight out.
And like Nelson, you'll get yourself, you'll get yourself
caught out. It's not that kind of battle.
Yeah. World according to Lieutenant
Commander Dunbar. Right.
So let's just let's just get into it.
They're doing an exercise and it's a really cool thing in the
movie to show us how it's meant to go.
So the movie obviously does the EM message piece at the
receiving of the signal, the checking over the signal by the
two guys who receive. They bring the signal up to the
XO and the Co. They both check it over, they
check the authentication code, they concur and they go for the
drill. And it's really cool that the
movie shows us that because obviously that's going to be the
the blueprint of how it's meant to go.
So that when it invariably doesn't go the way it's meant to
go, we know that it's different and that it's aberrant.
I like it when movies do shit like that.
As that's going off though to make the movie more exciting
that there is a galley fire. Pretty mega galley fire It looks
like. It looks like it's gas, which
can't be right? There's no way they've got gas
and an SSBN. Surely we stopped using gas at
sea decades and decades ago. Like it should be electric
right? I don't understand.
Maybe oil? We still use oil for like fat
fires, so it could be a grease fire, but the way it's blasting
across the frame it looks like it's gas, which is probably more
of how they achieve the special effect, right?
Yeah, how much? The so the flames leaking down.
For whatever reason the guys fighting the fire can't make it
to the galley isolation. So Denzel leaps, gets an Ed
Baron quickly leaps through the fire, smashes the button that no
else could reach. For some reason.
Denzel can jump, the other guys can't.
The buttons for officers only. That's why you see the enlisted
can't, can't, can't touch it. They've got to fill in a form.
Man, bit of a design flaw that the button is is substantially
high enough that people can't reach it while while dressed in
basic firefighting rig. That's everything as well.
Denzel jumps through that fire in basic firefighting rig.
Just like Steve's ruled down in the hood on mental.
Anyway that that happens. Captain Ramsey wants to continue
on with the drill. I think this is legitimately
demented. OK, so losing the galley like is
pretty significant issue. It's a it's a critical
compartment because it it obviously governs how you cook
and sustain for for you guys, even a minor fire would have
resulted in like potentially toxic smoke getting around the
boat. They obviously don't hit the
galley isolation and fix firefighting system until the
fire's pretty significant. They haven't been beaten back
yet because Denzel's jumped through it, which is the
definition of significance. So they they've managed to
handle it, but they haven't. I didn't see any other and this
is probably like a damage control thing in a movie.
A really good example of this is actually in that mini series
movie of Battle Star Galactica. But for whatever reason in this
movie they don't do it. They don't show smoke
boundaries. They don't show isolating of the
compartments. They don't show like crash
shopping and ventilation. They don't show any of that
stuff going on. And so there's a potential here
that toxic smoke has got around the rest of the boat and there's
toxic smoke in that compartment. The very threat of that should
be enough to like drop everything.
We're dealing with this. This is a pretty significant
issue. So like it's really serious for
a for a submarine because in order to vent smoke out, they
need to surface or at least get to a depth where they can send
something up to effect filtering of of air in.
So you have to send a pipe up for that for it to to bring in
fresh air. There's a term for that.
I forgot what it's called. Yeah.
So they've got to do that pretty, which is serious
business for them because that's when they're most vulnerable of
being detected. This is the kind of thing that
diesel electric submarines still have to do.
Conventional submarines still have to do this regular beats
just to get intake for the engines and that is like when
they are most risky of being detected in marine warfare.
Like for an SSBN on a safeguard patrol to have to do this is
pretty serious. They probably do have to do it
though because they need that compartment back and goal player
solution is you know, you'd go alongside duck guard chems would
come in do some chemical monitoring and.
Take Fiji, you can get the compartment back real safeguard
warfare, battle fighting conditions that you need to get
the smoke out and then you kind of just take it on risk a little
bit or maybe use briefing operates when you're working in
the compartment. Knowing that also that has a an
endurance they were using, I think at the bottles.
You could do it on a there's also normally on submarines vice
this isn't on on surface ships. On submarines.
They normally have essentially clogged in a fresh air system
that people get on board and it clogs into a central thing so
they can travel through the boat maintaining a fresh air throw.
I say fresh air, controlled breathable air from there.
Yeah, and you know things about that.
Fantastic. Oh, right, yeah, because so my
actual opinion about that, so that's just the beginning bit my
actual opinion and why it's it's fucking bullshit.
Is is later on, Denzel questions this in front of the captain in
the country room saying Are you sure you want to do this with
like there's a casualty? He's actually like literally a
casualty who's who ultimately dies as a result of the fire.
And then they have a a conversation about it back in,
in in Hackman's cabin. And I agree with him.
I agree with Hackman on the on the one point, which is we need
to show a unified face to the troops.
Don't undermine me in front of the guys in the middle of the
control room. So I understand that.
Yeah, I think the way I would handle that would be say, can we
have a word outside for just a second and then step somewhere a
bit more private and then go. So I think we should cancel this
drill right now. We've got a safeguard casualty.
He's someone he's not looking good.
He's going to die without a safeguard fire.
Here's my reasons for because I recommend my BDR part, my bowel
damage, my BDR priority, it would be to maintain USS Alabama
as a life sustaining platform. I like it's not, it's not to do
this fucking drill, it's to it's to keep everyone alive on the
boat because we've actually got a real mission to do.
So that ties on my second point, which is Gene Hackman then goes
on to say that actually the best time to do an exercise is when
there's chaos running. Yeah, it is.
But you do that by simulating more stuff in your exercise
where so you throw more complexity into the exercise as
you go in trained safe to train conditions.
You don't, you don't do it when there's a safeguard incident.
And that could literally sink you because that fire could have
easily got out of control. It took them so long to get that
that fixed firefighting systems operation in the galley could
have killed someone if they weren't on air.
Like like there's so much stuff that could have got and it did
kill someone ultimately. So yeah, right.
That's it. That's when did that.
So, so, so that is then the bottle lines drawn I think
between those two, they now officially do not see eye to eye
about how to run the boat. I think, I think that's, that's
the moment where the potential beautiful relationship that
could have started Sowers, which sets us up perfectly for what
happens next, which is when the launch order, the safeguard
launch order comes in. In fact, I I've absolutely
witnessed Captain Commanding Officer ignore a safeguard
safeguard cord during an exercise.
So unfortunately it's not not unlikely.
So basically that is how it would go down in Germany.
Well, that CEO only was CEO for little more than half a year.
So I don't think that went too well.
To be so careful with this kind of stuff, you know, I, I
understand the impulse Like we've got a job to do.
Can we, can we handle both instance at the same time?
Is it's officially low enough, but I just I just don't you
don't mess around with people's actual safety.
You know it doesn't. It doesn't improve lethality of
your of your if your platform if you just stood John and try and
do exercise when you've got people safeguard breaking
themselves. Gene Hackman's whole thing.
Oh it it was his £300 that killed him, not the fire.
Yeah, the fire had the fact though, didn't it mean it wasn't
play? Yeah, it was certainly what we'd
call a causal factor. Yeah.
You know what I mean? So the next big bit I'm going to
kick off about is the so the launch order, right?
The the actual crux of the movie.
So then the inciting Internet of the movie occurs.
They receive an EM because this guy is now taking control of the
facility. So the EM comes in and it it's
the order to missile launch. What happens almost immediately
after that is another message starts to come in.
But there, and this is Hollywood, but there one radio
that can, that can that can receive the yeah message, the
most important thing they'll ever receive, the one point of
the one single point of failure they've got for that doesn't
work. OK, I'm going to put that to one
side because about it the movie doesn't work.
And then they have the the the big disagreement.
So they've got 1 positive order to to fire.
They've got a garbled second message and and Hackman wants to
fire the missile. Denzel Washington, as Hunter
says, I do not concur. Not.
Concur. And I do not recognise your
authority to relieve me under command under Navy regulations.
Cobb, arrest this man. I'm getting out of here on the
operating procedures governing the release of nuclear weapons.
We cannot launch our missiles unless both you and I agree.
What are you having for, Sir? This is expressly why your
command must be repeated. But then they have this
disagreement and then this is where it really kicks off.
So we have ultimately Ramsey gets removed from the control
room and sent back to his stateroom.
Hunter Armed Guard, British Guard and Hunter the EXO takes
command Capital C command of the of the vessel.
So this as well. And then course, Hunter then
takes the the the decisive action to attack and destroy the
Akula leading this excellent kind of cat and mouse chase that
they have with us, which I thought was incredibly cool,
beautifully shot. But before going to that at
stake. Yeah.
So I just really like how the film ramps up the tension so
much. And just when when this film is
on, it is on form, man, it is. I love it.
Probably on form. Yeah.
Like a dam. They're arguing and they're
yelling over each other. Yeah, that's true.
Well done. Yeah, like it's brilliant.
What I keep saying, like the reviews of the film on the on
letterbox for the for the notes of the piano gallery, it was
quite hard to find stuff. It's actually kind of funny
because a lot of the reviews of it's very insightful and a lot
of them come back again and again.
It's an action film where almost everything is dialogue and I
think that's brilliant. Like it's it's a proper dialogue
heavy, really, really well written drama.
It's fantastic. It's great.
It really, really is, and Tony Scott does such a good shot job
of shooting it because it's like still a really interesting movie
to look at. Yeah, the angles and some of
it's a bit wild, like when it has shown rapid movement through
the ship and you're showing like all those angles of them going
down multiple decks and it's and it's like it's not think just
how big is this vessel? You know, it's like it's like, I
mean, wisecrack my dad always made about the TV series Voyage
to the Bottom of the Sea was that the USS Seaview was
somewhere between the size of AT class submarine and Taiwan,
depending on the plot and depending on what the plot
required. And I think I think that's
something that you do see in like a lot of a lot of submarine
films that can, you know, if the plot demands that it'd be big
dance, be tiny. It all works well.
A tricky 1, isn't it because SSBNS are massive, but they
don't feel massive is the thing. So all the component, because
it's, they're still a tremendous economy of space.
It's not like, it's not like it's massive because they've got
the freedom plate. It's not like this aircraft
carrier there, they are cramped on board.
Yeah, because we're like the missile like tubes on like like
we're talking about this, the Hood front October, right?
How like they've got to say freaking Warhammer 40K cathedral
kind of like missile tube layout and like that.
That's not accessible while at sea, right?
I mean, yeah. Yeah, I've not seen a, I've
never seen a, the ladder chain that you have, that central
ladder chain, that stairwell, it's actually a stairwell.
I've never seen that before. And I don't know if that's
accurate to an Alabama class. SSBNI have been down into a I've
got to be really careful what I talk about here.
I have been on AV, I have been on AV boot before and down the
one single letter chain into that and that is not the same.
That is a literal ladder. Yeah.
Yeah, cool. So yeah, I love that.
That seems brilliant. Let.
Me. Just write down British
submarines have ladders, yeah? They got me.
This ladder technology gives Britain the edge.
Everybody else is still using lengths of rope, just scaling
the bulkheads. I've heard that some nations
are. Trying to now.
I've heard that some nations are trying to evolve humans into
spider men so it can just like climb up the bulkheads inside
the vessels and have no need for ladders.
Yeah. Consider escalators.
Until they don't work. Talking and talking about
multiple points of failure. That Mitch Hedberg would have
been laughing at that, just watching the escalates become
stairs before his very eyes. I.
Hope his lace gets caught in a bloodbath ensued.
I love this. I love this sequence though.
So you have, again, you have that Fisher form.
So you have the people who are Captain Ramsey loyalists and
people who are happies that Hunter is a voice of reason and
a moderating voice because obviously nobody wants to launch
a world ending nuclear missiles apart from Ramsey who's super
keen to do it for some reason. It's not really, you know what.
I think if you were to improve one thing about this movie is
that you would give Ramsey the humanising.
There's a bit of it at the end, but I think there's a through
line. If you had Ramsey go, of course
I don't want to fire nuclear missiles.
I know it would end the world. But I do believe it is my duty
if ordered to do so and just have it be more spelled out that
that he's acting out of duty and pride.
Yeah, that's a very. Good.
Not pride, but duty rather than him being bullish and really
keen to fire them. Yeah, cool.
So they get separated and then, yeah, let's talk about the the
crisis that begins. So obviously a lot of internal
tension between the officers and crew, but now there's an
external battle as the cooler kicks off.
Which which final way should have taken them to to Can't
fucking read it but the. Noise noise quiet stays ultra
noise quiet they. Keep banging on doors and
yelling. Yeah, yeah, that's this the one
thing that I think Tony Scott was like, you know what, It's a
movie, you don't care. But yeah, you're right.
They're slamming hatches. They're feeding fish.
They're. Yeah, and busting out one of my
and busting out one of my favourite coaches, Cod Soda.
Holy shit, Sir. You know I've got one question.
So commonly submarines are referred to as boats, right?
Yeah, and they've got a chief off the boat, correct?
Why does the CEO keep referring it to it as a ship?
It pisses me off Unintentional. Made by the film makers.
I was, you know, asked the same question.
So there's a so there's actually a goof and like there's not some
kind of there wasn't some point when that for like I'd like a
few months of the night. He started calling submarines
that have ongoing reports as ships.
Correct. They're meant to be called
boats. So whilst the Royal Navy and
again the US Navy, whilst the prefix for those vessels is
HMSUSS, as in the United States ship, Manchester ship or his
Manchester ship, now they are still referred to as boats.
They are, you know, for the many reasons that we call things
ships and boats is a boat. I mean also they lose a bit of
the gravity if they were called like the USB Alabama.
Yeah, RMB not. Like your shit, you've got to
turn it upside down and try and fit it in that way, Yeah.
In fairness, His Majesty's boat sounds bravely unfreatening.
It's it's just the king in a little rowboat.
Just scud about. 2nd in command of a unit that had raw Navy
motor boats, RMBS. Get in.
But yeah, all right, cool. Yeah.
So a cooler class fights kicks off Yeah, really good really,
really film making wise I was to take my Navy head off I would
say really good Action Cinema like generally it's fast-paced.
The music is great Hans Zimmer brilliant music.
The tension is there. A lot of the visual language of
it is tricky to do. And they pull it off.
So there's two, there's two competing things going on.
One, the sonar operator plays a major part of the of the battle,
But you can't show a realistic waterfall soon on display to the
general public and expect them to interpret what's going on.
Nor can you have just the guy screaming at the terminal and
then just cut to showing an actual waterfall display because
it just wouldn't make any sense and it wouldn't be very
thrilling to watch. And you haven't got the time to
like teach the audience how to interpret a waterfall display
either. That would be a really boring
movie. Not for me, but for other people
it would be very boring, you know, So they do that.
So they've got to, so they simplify that display.
And when I say simplify, they make it into a weird mixy BLOB
of a, of a, of a raw radar feed and an ARPA radar feed.
So you have like sweep lines, like a radar, bearing in mind
that those sweep lines are there because there's something
literally spinning basically around.
There's nothing underwater spinning for those sweep lines.
And then the other thing is because they need to use the
visual language of colour to dictate who the friendly things
are and who the enemy thing is and, and what the torpedoes are.
This is what the vessel is. And they have this weird thing
where the Akula contact comes up as like a red Oval and when it
fires torpedoes, little green ovals come out of it.
And they also move really, really smoothly, despite the
fact the sweep lines again, going around, they're not
refreshing with the sweep lines. They're just transiting across.
And now you do get certain feeds that can do stuff like that,
like, but that's more it's more like a command system, which is
taking that feed as one of the many inputs, putting through
data distribution unit and then showing you a screen with
something else on. You wouldn't have St blinds
necessarily on that unless it was part of a radio image, radar
image overlay. So another movie that falls far
of this and the legacy of Tony Scott is topping Maverick on the
aircraft carrier shows you like a really weird mixie bubble of a
radar feed and a command system feed.
Anyway, I'm being boring. So that's one bit.
The second bit is is movies always show submarines moving
silently through the water at a slow pace because that's how we
understand submarines to manoeuvre.
It doesn't sit right for us so that submarines would go fast,
especially model submarines which are which we're using here
using model work. It would look fake, I think, and
uncanny to our eyes. However, a lot of combat in this
is is predicated on the the use of seduction countermeasures and
the way solution countermeasures work.
And in fact the way this battle works.
So one the way the solution countermeasures work is that you
have to have a lot of separation between yourself and the
countermeasure for it to work. So you're trying to Draw
Something away from you and towards the countermeasure.
So they need to have that that separation of distance,
otherwise it wouldn't work. The second thing about that is a
big part of the fight is that the boat has to establish
minimum range away from the cooler in order to fire its own
torpedoes to arm. So they need to get at least
1000 yards away, which is actually a really small
distance. It's like half a mile.
They've got to get like 1000 yards away before they fire
their own ones. But again, in the exterior shots
that we see, everything looks like it's moving really slow.
And now this is a weird thing because SSBNS are underwater
cathedrals and they've got a lot of horsepower and they've got,
you know, nuclear engines and they actually can go pretty
quick. So they they could have shown
them going a bit faster. I thought that's my only other
sort of Navy wise kind of dissection of that.
But otherwise really, really good.
Sorry, go on. I was going to say, I saw saw a
little smile on Sanya's face when we talked about the the
safety ranges of torpedoes. Because you were thinking of a
certain Captain Tupolov, weren't you, mate?
Hard and fast. You idiot as you killed us.
Rest and feast of a Real 1. Man.
I liked how it really kind of shows like a three-dimensional
kind of aspect of the submarine warfare as well, especially
with, you know, it being like right on top of them at one
point and again, the model work is is really cool.
Love, like, I mean, this is like, again, you see these
things from the mid 90s that are like really heavy on model work
and the looks really good and really realistic.
And then a couple of years later, people pivoted to CGI and
then we'll look back at it and it's like, what the hell is this
PS1 cutscene that I'm watching in the cinema right now?
I'm going to do a rare. I'm going to do a rare
compliment towards US Marshals here.
The the aeroplane crash at the start of US Marshals is all
major work and it looks amazing. It's amazing.
It's really good. If you if you look at the
aeroplane crash in Air Force One, yeah, one of the one of the
worst CGI effect shots of all time.
I actually can't remember that scene from.
We'll cover that eventually, and you'll see it.
Diabolical. There's a really good YouTube
video of a guy who's done his own version of it using
computers now. Yeah.
And you see them side by side, and it's like, yeah, that's what
we could have won had we had that kind of rendering power
back in 1997. But yeah, I have all ago.
Yeah, DL listeners, we've got about 172 films on this list, by
the way. So just like, you know, probably
not going away anytime soon. Yeah, I think as well when you
look at like the visual kind of storytelling of films like this,
you've got to look at it and like a kind of continuum with
other things and like like other media like Hunter October came
out and what and I'm going to keep referring to this not
because it's a gold standard of submarine films, even though
kind of is one of the top wall as it's up there, it's up there
nightly came out. Correct.
In the five years between this film coming out and hood for
Altobar coming out five years previously, when you look at
other media and stuff you've got like the the kind of upscaling
and the technological leaps and video games work with us on here
that in hunt for Altobar, a significant amount of the
storytelling of like the action sequences like the red root one
sequence when when they're just just booing at high speed.
A lot of that's tool with stopwatches, right, Because your
average kind of like vision of how was suddenly works at the
time wasn't as here as a screen with an icon on it and it's
moving and stuff. 1995 comes round when Windows 95 has just
come out. It's really exciting.
Everyone's pumped about the little start button.
The Microsoft's blasted its budget on licence and start me
up by The Rolling Stones for its adverts.
And so you do see more kind of screens that, like you said, are
very much fakey, fakey like something from a computer game
kind of thing, because that's kind of what's expected at this
point, I think. So part of it's to tell little
people how it's going on, but they'll have is it's expected
work and general in life at that point for other people's come a
lot more computerised and stuff. And so it's it's it's kind of
got to really be done like that. And you've you've got your
little icon that PRC and submarine type a cooler
manufacturer USSR because because that's what you're
expecting to see on like things that computer games and stuff.
So I think that's kind of an effect of other media and the
presentation of these kind of situations.
Just my humble thoughts, but you know.
That's cool. The display for identifying the
track, I don't know. I, I wouldn't say that's
particularly accurate, but the concept is the, the, the, the
analysis, the computer aided analysis of, of a, of a sonar
like sound of a, a track, either Pacific vessel or or submarine
and then appointed it to a known track in the library and going
like suspect Akula suspect. So for many, whatever that's
that's legit, That's a real thing.
Yeah, cool. Man, so during this they do get
so they they kill the cooler. The cooler gets one final shot
off before it's sunk, however, and that does detonate pretty
close to them and does take out some of the boat, doesn't it?
Yeah. So during that we have some
fire, there's some flooding, we have some struggles to achieve
ballast. Yeah, harrowing.
So the flooding scene is what was going to go into grim AF.
Jesus, yeah. It's really, it's particularly
sad because obviously the compartment's filling up.
You've got Steve Zahn down there.
Love Steve Zahn and somebody else.
I'm not sure who it is. Is it?
Is it Ryan Felipe? Don't know.
Down there anyway. And they've been tools.
Look, we've lost that compartment.
I need to see that compartment. A Denzel is Denzel's showing
that he is not the namby pamby soft officer that everyone was
worried that he was going to be. Because he's willing to do the
probably the hardest thing you'll ever do in his military
career, which is shut a hatch on somebody in the middle of a
damage control effort and and subject them to their fate.
The real tragedy of it is that the only reason that Steve Zahn
and the VI don't leave the compartment is because they
can't hear over the sound of the water as they're trying to
isolate the valve. Really horrible.
Really. That's freaking heartbreaking,
man. When when they eat because
because obviously that like guys like shouting commands for them
and they're having like a whole different conversation down
because of the sound of the water.
And it's that's really, really horrifying.
Man, he's fate is sealed when that like the head out of the of
the office smashes in the grid and it's horrible visceral and
the blood and everything. Oh my God.
Yeah. Really grim.
And then there's the score at that point as well, hands in his
score where they match. So during the initial dieting of
the boat, they, his score kind of gives away to a choir singing
Eternal Father Strong to save the the naval hymn.
And then it has a reprise during that sequence.
And he's like, you know, head trauma, drowning compartment,
the compartment getting sealed, you know, for those in peril on
the sea. Absolutely chilling, man.
Yeah. Absolute needle drop.
Yeah, go on Grimm, throughout this whole sequence we've got
that one engineer radio operator struck maintainer who's who's
main effort is trying to get that EAM thing back online.
Yeah, the Star Trek fan. Star Trek fan?
Yeah, that's another bit. Of yeah, I can just imagine
Tarantino coming in with his with his black sports jacket at
his white shirt with too many buttons open and he just.
And there's a line of coke off that little red baseball cap
that Gene Hackman's wearing and he's and he's like, we've got to
get a tricky at this film, you know, because now captain,
that's a captain, you know, And like, it's, it's just what.
Did you know that for Fiona Apple, the singer-songwriter?
Yes. She got clean because she spent
one night with Quentin Tarantino when he was high on coke and she
was like, I'm never doing that again.
I'm never excusing myself to cocaine ever again.
George Grace. Yeah, and it's absolutely
accurate. Man, he's so, so tedious.
This guy is like an operating maintain of a radio.
I don't think that Denzel Watson used to talk to him like a baby
and go like, you're you're going to be Scotty and I'm going to
need that bit more power. Like, dude, how about do your
fucking job? I've, I've literally just, I've
literally just committed an act of war by killing about 300,
like 200 probably Russian sailors.
Yeah. Before I end the world, please
unfuck this radio now. Yeah, it's absolutely mental.
I mean, the Silver Surfer thing, God forgive me, I can.
I can kind of guess how. Because it sure stands the what?
Because. Because there's a point to it,
right In the end, because it shows kind of just in
storytelling terms, the Denzel Washington is the kind of guy
who's able to meet people on their level.
And he's like anyone who reads comic books knows that one of
our Silver Surf has the best. And that's, it's a counterpoint
to when Gina Hatton's got his gun against someone's head and
he's having a look at this guy's like, like, you know, like,
yeah, yeah. And and like, he's, he's having
a look at this guy's for the name badge.
So it's like that that's, that's the kind of storytelling point
counterpoint kind of thing, isn't it?
But there's to the, to the, to the, to the Star Trek thing.
Hey guys, you know what you love?
I'm going to put my level on you.
Yeah, yeah. I, it's a really good point out
about the, the silver surf thing because I, I took it to be as a
bit of, a bit of a leadership misstep by Denzel Washington
there because it shows a little bit of favouritism.
Yeah, yeah. It's like, oh, you, you're a,
you're a, you're a, a supervisor.
You could be going to Annapolis. You could be an officer.
Like, yeah, everyone, everyone knows you're you're my
favourite. I just, I just didn't like that
because it shows a little bit of favouritism from Denzel
Washington, who's meant to be like a down the line.
I I wanted to get your opinion on the whole, you're a
supervisor, why are you doing this?
Because you couldn't get Commission kind of thing.
I wanted your opinion on that. So yeah.
OK. So I don't, I don't apportion
intrinsically more value to having a commissioned vice
remaining an enlisted person. They're two different, they're
two very different career tracks.
So for me as an officer and having been a rating, a rating
to me is a subject matter expert.
And they will and I always refer to to to to my, my chiefs for
their more advanced knowledge in the, in certain aspects of their
job, especially when it comes to like how kit works and the buy
the book of application of very specific doctrine for how you do
very specific tasks. So on that aspect, yeah.
So, yeah. On the other hand, if you see
some potential and someone would be able to do that and excel on
it. Yeah, I've done it before.
I've I've, I've told people you should consider getting their
papers raised and, and, and going to Dartmouth.
And I've helped people through that process.
I always support as soon as you want to do that, because any,
any person can walk off the street and go, go to an on
forces career office and start that process.
Just go, I want to become an officer and they go, right.
Cool, fill out this form and we'll do a system.
If you go through the steps, it annoys me that you get sailors
who go to their divisional chain of command and express that and
it's like, OK, well, I'm not sure about that.
So we're going to think about that and I'm going to come back
to it at some point and just get your password finished and kind
of like put up these artificial roadblocks.
I think. Yeah, if you want to do it to
his life, his career, ultimately the only thing that's different
is that you have to give a recommend as their deal so that
you don't kind of quote unquote, wasting the selection board's
time. But I think it's a bit rich that
any civilian can go off and do that and waste the selection
boards time. But but a sailor who's already
demonstrated they can get through trading as a disciplined
person is showing ambition. I do as you take them through
like planning exercises and and like the leadership stuff and
interview and that kind of thing.
It's just to gauge how driven they are to do it.
But I'm always really keen to help people.
Didn't really help people as much as they possibly can if
they come to me for that kind of thing because it was really
dull. Now this episode's becoming a
master class on leadership. It's actually meant we are, we
are, We are now a film defence and leadership and comedy
podcast. We just keep adding
specialisations on. Promotion between commander.
So the next thing that happens is mutiny occurs.
So a mutiny and counter mutiny. So we have James Gandolfini
raids, the world's biggest small arm store and everyone gets
absolutely tooled up. There's even ammunition for a
belt fed in there and I'm not sure but I think it's like these
50 calibre ammunition. I might be wrong, but it's like.
That's some big rounds. Was there fucking?
Belt fed on a on a modern day SSPN man.
It's wild. It is wild.
It's crazy. So that happens.
They take control of the boat back off Denzel and oh, this is
quite cool actually. So for the last 60 minutes of
the movie, there's there's a running countdown of the time
for the suspected launch window for the ultra nationalists
seized nuclear weapons. So you've got that kind of
running in the background is like it's counting down and it
runs pretty much in real time. Yeah.
So that's really cool and that adds a bit of tension to what's
going on, some real stakes because it's like, right, if we
don't launch now and they do launch, we are we are screwed.
Was into real time, like when there's just that kind of like
like films, like like like films that are completely shot and
it's all real time cool films. When it goes into real time,
like right last like 30 or 60 minutes, it's it's game time.
It's it's class. That's so cool, man.
So you mentioned the old nationalists.
I know you're aware knows. As you mentioned, Michael
Schiffer worked on one of the Call of Duty games.
Bunch of them. And I'm just, you know what it
is. I wonder if it was one of the
ones that has that like has ultra nationalists in it.
I'll check for you some of the IT was some of the early ones.
And remember, no Russian. I bet.
I bet you did. Let's have a look.
Because yeah, that's like ultra nationalist something, isn't it?
It's oh, no. So he did Call of Duty 2.
Finest Hour and the original Call of Duty.
So no, he didn't do the didn't do the didn't do the ones with
the all our nationalists and stuff because I thought, you
know, was he mentioned on that? I thought.
I wonder if he's just like rehashing a few by Diaz he
previously had. So.
He's written all. This military stuff and like the
nuclear techno fellows and stuff.
He also wrote LA Divorce with Kate Hudson and Naomi Watts.
So, yeah, we have the countdown going on and Hackman has taken
control of the boot again. Washington tweets from that
like, we've never got this radio fixed.
The radio guy pipes up, I've never got the radio fixed.
We can get the rest of the message.
Hackman, to his credit, meets him halfway and says, look,
you've got like, it's like 14 minutes till till the missile
launch. He's like, right, you've got 7
minutes in order. So we can still affect our first
strike, I suppose. And yeah, meets him halfway.
And they do get it fixed. The message comes in and it's I
think it's really well done because they go through the
whole rigmarole of like verified, I concur,
authenticated. I can they both read it.
They both read it. I concur, I concur.
And then finally, it's only when Hackman grabs the gob stick that
he that he says like abort nuclear launch and that kind of
stuff. I've missed a couple of bits
before that, sorry, which is Diego Boson's character and him
getting the gun held to his head.
And then as you mentioned earlier, Hackman holding the gun
to peel Hillar's head, which is Scott Grimes, the actor Scott
Grimes. So, yeah, the, the tension
ratcheting up and the, and the critical nodes being the one
combination that that Viggo Motson knows to get into the
safe to get out the the launch. Yeah, keys.
Yeah, I mean, that's the point when you say just this, this
excellent kind of you see Gene Ackman's reaction in in the
character's kind of self self realisation that he knows he's
messed up at this point. Yeah, Cat get in.
Yeah, yeah, but which one is that Laszlo?
Or is that this is? This is a little lassie B.
He was just meowing at the door sort.
Of oh here little man, a clear and present cat.
She's. For our viewers on YouTube and
Spotify. Otherwise just a cat.
Yeah, you're absolutely right though.
So that's that's when I think Hackman takes a look at himself
and realises like, what am I doing?
I'm holding it. Yeah, he realises that, that
he's that he's lost in the source at this point and he's.
Threatening Arabs? He's lost the yeah, threatening.
I record exactly. It's like.
You know you fucked up when you're you're holding a gun to
Aragon, the son of Ara Thorn's head.
My brother, my captain, my king. Yeah.
My brother, my ex, Oh my king. Absolutely no one.
Incredible scenes. Yeah, so as I say, they finally
had the resolution. They've got the second message.
It was to call them off to abort.
They do abort. Everyone breathes a massive sigh
of relief. Actual cheering bricks out on
board, because everyone's glad that we're not going to end the
world today. I would probably be pretty glad
to. And the muni is essentially
quaffed. And I imagine you don't see it
because it just cuts straight back to like the end sort of
scene, but probably the most awkward week or two patrolling
back. Yeah, dead shipmates.
I would have hated to have been in that wardroom.
Those meal times must have been diabolical.
Yeah, like. Yeah.
Thank you. Yeah, just like you tooling
around with you essentially dead homies in the trunk.
It's horrible. Yeah, this is the captain.
Mum and dad are getting a divorce.
There's nothing that you guys have done.
Yeah. Yeah, awkward.
Let me have the final sequence. They're they're having a a
meeting with Admiral James Robot, who we'll of course,
we'll see in a few years time. The enemy, enemy of the state.
He was Ben Bradley in All the President's Men.
And he says, and I totally agree.
Look, this it's incredible this has happened.
Like we have these safeguards specifically for the situation
that were not followed. The the end result essentially
is that they were both right and they were both wrong.
I would say some of the stuff that he was worrying about, it's
not his job to worry about it. The the the weapons release
piece, not necessarily kind of his his bag to worry about.
I guess you had the initial order, second order.
I think his real duty was to find out what the 2nd order was.
Easy to say that in hindsight, isn't it?
But yeah, I do, I do. I do feel like.
And then then they kind of the movie kind of hammers some
points on that by am I saying that weapons release for some
reasons from now on is draw directly by the President United
States? Thank God for that man.
Oh, yeah, that's what you want, right?
Yeah, that's very. Relieve.
A very small, steady pair of hands on that button.
Thank God for that, man. It's like, I mean, there.
I mean, for one, there's a story when apparently Richard Nixon
got so wasted that he he wanted water Cambodia be nukes and
Henry Kissinger had like talk him down apparently.
And the wild thing is because I'm like watching a lot of
venture brothers at the minute. I keep thinking of Doctor Henry
Killinger. And just like, if you haven't
seen venture brothers, none of this is working on like a kind
of visual level. But just like as little skull of
us and he's like Mr. President, do not nuke Cambodia half
asleep. Instead, go to bed, look into my
my mystical bag of murder. It's like that's a really deep
we had cut and I'm very sorry. But yeah, it's awesome that the
US President Scott like got, you know, the ability to do that.
It's awesome. It's it's a period of
unparalleled stability for everybody.
Nobody's worried about it's us all.
Absolutely not. Absolutely not.
If aliens are listening to this podcast as they look over just
the scorched earth, it's just in a radiated wasteland.
Yet somehow we've picked up this broadcast off the Internet.
We're sorry. Sorry man.
I'm I've not listened to the audiobook Nuclear War, a
Scenario by Annie Jacobson. And if you want something to
really creep you out and make you fear for impending nuclear
crisis, that is the book to go for.
It goes, it goes through like literally there's a chapter and
like what happened to us for the 1st 4 seconds and then it's
like, and then like 2 minutes and then like 24 minutes later.
Honestly, it's breathtaking detail.
But at the beginning of the book, it goes through a list of
everyone that she interviewed to to piece together.
And it's like senior members of government, the light of CIA
director, defence secretaries, everything.
Yeah. It's really, really well
researched, fascinating. A lot all the way through it.
Yeah. But yeah.
Yeah. Really, really, really good
book. Cool.
Final thing, I suppose one last little bit of irritating Quintin
Tarantinoism, is that that whole show about Lipizanas.
Yeah, what? I don't know in.
I don't know if this is deliberate or not, but Ram is
it, Ramsey is. Ramsey insists they're from
Portugal and Hunter insists they're from Spain, or vice
versa. Yeah.
They're both wrong. They're from Slovenia, so I
don't know, that's meant to be like a indication that they're
both wrong. And that's like the whole the
whole points or if it's just like, you know what I mean?
But but the whole thing is just smacks of Tarantino and it's
just like, OK. Yeah, I mean, there's already
enough kind of story beats that illustrate the difference of
opinion of character and of personality between the two
guys. You don't need to put in the we
had actually these racist horse analogies are from this country.
Actually, you're wrong, dickhead.
The from the from this country and I'm still really racist, you
know? That is the, that is the racist
thing, isn't it? Yes, the whole, the horses are.
The horses are all white and actually, no, they're they're
born black. And yeah, OK, yeah.
And it's and it's and if the stories are true.
They also only are still around because patterns stole stop the
Russians from eating them. But.
Now that's the real story. This film should be digging into
that incredibly based of pattern.
And probably the only. Base thing pattern has ever
done, to be fair. What did you say?
Yeah. Not often you hear based and
patent in the same. Let's just talk about Will
Patton, who was incredibly based.
You have no idea what matter of power can do.
Legend. I was I was there as well.
I can understand why Denzel Washington was was really riled
up if the whole let was on our things and let's inject some
weird kind of racism by Quentin Tarantino, the whitest man in
the world. Quentin Tarantino was the
whitest guy in the world. And I can kind of see why Denzel
Washington would have been a bit kind of honked off that, you
know, this guy's just right in this because it's it wasn't it
wasn't necessary. And they?
Would have been shooting this at the same time like Pulp Fiction
came out. Yeah, and.
If you think about like some of the stuff that that Talentino
himself says in that movie, it's like, I don't know how he can.
And you know, maybe he uses the whole like, you know, some of my
best friends are black excuse because obviously Samuel
Jackson's there for most of it, but I don't.
Know, yeah, what if I'm what if I'm singing along of my
favourite rap song while I'm writing my Lipazano stallion,
You know, ridiculous. Yeah, like the like he's like.
But come on. As, as Sammy has said, some of
my most intelligent horses of black.
Just shoot them. What's 1000 yards for?
Because it takes 1000 yards to torpedoes to orange.
Jesus, you're fucking to get on this ship.
Snapshot 2:00 and 4:00 snapshot. 2.
And four. Categories, gentlemen, for this
amazing movie. OK, so first one, casting guys
that ladies, I won't do Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman
because they are Titans of cinema.
I remember those Titans. But we have Oscar from a little
list. We've got Matt Craven who played
Zimmer, the 10 Zimmer, he's in the other movie we're talking
about doing this week, A few Good Men.
He was in that show Under the Bridge last year with clearly
Gladstone. If you saw that he was in the
Pacific and he was in Deja Vu by Tony Scott and starring Denzel
Washington as well. So he became a repeat customer
we got. And he played the CIA director
of an X-Men first class. Yes, he did.
Yeah, he did. Yeah.
Everything comes back to those 3 letters.
Speaking of that, we've got George Dasunda, who played the
chief of the boat, who we of course know from no way out.
Yes. Awesome.
And he was in The Deer Hunter, and he was also the partner of
Michael Douglas in Basic Instinct.
You know, I know. And course, George Sinza was a
German, much like our Sanya. He was Bavarian, actually.
Sanya. Oh, try.
To try to try to try to fish him in, try to get reel in a big
one, but it didn't work I've. Tried.
Off the hook. Broad, broad, broad.
It's October, I am electing to ignore Bavaria.
Viggo Mortensen Aragon, son of Arathon.
Enough said. Yeah, he's been a few films.
Did you know that he did break a stone?
He's not really James Gandolfini.
Tony Soprano series like 30 in the Loop, Last Castle, Robert
Redford, True Romance, son of a Tony Scott movie.
The guy's a legend. Not really that guy.
I loved that when they went to the luxuriously equipped small
arms locker, everybody's got a Beretta R.E.M. 9 or a 92 apart
from James got Gamalfini, who's like, hey, forget about it.
And he's got the fucking and he's got the wand called 1911.
That's on the ship that I'm you and all these things you say.
I'm so ship pilled by the dialogue in the film.
But yeah, I say I'm I'm I'm flip flopping on that kind of haven't
had Canon that James Gandolfi and he just brought his own
piece one day. Because I think I've said this
before, but if you look at like a lot of these Steven Seagal
money laundering era films, I think he's using his personal
sidearm a lot of them because there's the same there's the
same kind of busted old 1911 that he's using.
But it's funny as hell because because he still can't shoot
with that. Like he blinks when he shoots
and it's terrible. That's a whole other shit show.
But yeah like I love the fact that just the most mob coded
character is parking a good old 1911 baby back-to-back to World
wars winner. Forget about it.
Single stock magazine. 9 millimetre kills the body, 45
kills the soul. Big bullet, son.
Steve Zahn, he was in the white loads few years ago.
He's in silo this year. One of the only one of the best
things about that season. Rescue Dawn.
Sahara War for the Planet of the Apes as well Suzanne of Suzanne
Ryan Felipe we talked to already crew intentions.
Yeah. Gosford Park as well.
Robert Altman's was that his last film might have been Scott
Grimes as PO, Hila Malarkey and Banda Brothers and who's in the
Oval. I'm always not sure very much,
but I'm aware he's in it and he got his kind of big break as a
cast regular in the ER back in the day as well.
The ginger doctor Daniel von Bargain, I think I'm saying that
right, is our Russian ultra naturalist.
Ultra nationalist. So the Russian Ultra Naturist,
he's like, we must be nude all the time.
Mother Russia demands your nudity.
Mother Russia demands you to be naked in Siberia.
Daniel von Bargain is who plays the Russian ultra nationalist,
is Kruger in Seinfeld from Kruger's Industrial Smoothing.
He's also in The Postman. He was in RoboCop 3, The Bad
RoboCop, and he was in Oprah, The Wear Out There.
Do you know what like a really good like just like a bit of a
wink to the fans, which actually would have made the film
terrible and watchable would be if if George just stands as dad
just like thinned him out like he did in in this use, you got
it. You kind of smooth out silk
sheets of the hot date when a babe.
That's the CNN footage. Yes.
It's over. It's all over.
Reporting live from FS Fox. Says forget a little bad
Constanza. Just like bitching about at a
press conference that you somehow got into.
Danny Nucci is the sooner supervisor.
TSMI. Think the guy who prefers the KB
era Silver Surfer. He was in the Rock and Titanic
and alive. The famous cannibalism in the
Andes movie. And then finally we got Lilo
Brancato, who was the radio operator maintainer.
He was in a Bronx Tale, The Sopranos, and which we're
turning Scott again in Enemy of the State.
Cool. Should we do some quotes from
that movie? So of course, like I said, one
of my favourite ones is the con console.
Not holy shit Sir, it's right on top of us.
Simply because I like the fact that he's maintaining the proper
format of the message and that he's like, you know, set up.
Hello, con, this is so hot and then he's losing his right.
Holy shit Sir, it's been I'm trying to find the one
particular one that I really liked as well.
Why you do that? I I was a big fan of Captain
Ramsey's policy broadcasts. It says.
All I ask is that you keep up with me.
If you can't, then that's strange sensation you'll be
feeling in the city of your pants will be my boot of your
ass. I love that man.
Like I say, good expectation management.
Yeah, I saw the whole is lying to hunt out and you open it
beats the film when the when the one like the product the sale of
the submarine says heading out of port and he's like I'm going
to give you a tiny bit of advice if you want to run, but someday
the very worst you can do was worry about yourself or try to
impress me. I can't stand save asses and I
wouldn't about kiss asses. And I really like that save
asses and kiss asses. That's that's good.
And The thing is, this is when it's still trying to show you
that this guy is a good leader and something like genuinely,
that's a good kind of like, I mean, if I was in a job and new
position and someone's like, look, just trying to impress me,
just just do a good job, you know?
Yeah, that's actually cool because you know, obviously you
you work with people in management rules and stuff who
really do love having a kiss out surround them.
The interesting thing about Hackman at the start of this is
that you're saying the right stuff.
I don't know if he, I don't know if he walks out walk
particularly well. I think, I think he I think he
would if he fundamentally agreed with Hunter's worldview.
But I think once that schism comes in, that's kind of off the
off the menu. It's frustrating though, because
yeah, that that relationship, the the COXO relationship on a,
on any, any kind of warship is super important for it to be
truthful, honest and and and kind of also harmonious.
Nothing worse than a ship with a seal and the exo do not get
along. The other thing you don't want
is just a pure yes man. You don't want the, you want the
exo to just be like, yes, Sir, no, Sir, and just going with
every single one of the seals. Good ideas.
The seal needs you to be that kind of moderating voice that
that because you are meant to be the person who has the the his
ears to the ground has the vibe of the I was going to say men,
but the the workforce. Especially in this situation
when one of the main functions of the XO is to concur or not
concur. These are.
Critical. Just say call on 2 new missiles,
yeah? Yeah, and it's the kind of thing
that at this level of command, it's a weird one as well because
it takes quite a lot of balls for Hunter to slip up here.
Whilst he is backed by by regulation, he's a 2 1/2 F-10
commander. He's probably gusting commander
and would and would almost certainly get promoted out of
this this draft. Ramsey is A4 ring captain and is
probably should by his demeanour, he's probably topped
out the captain. He kind of runs his bit of
roost, but he is not a politician and is not going to
make flag rank. That's the impression you get
from it. A bit like, a bit like, a bit
like maverick and topical Maverick.
He's a foreign captain. He's not.
He's never going to be an opera. He's an operator primarily.
So yeah, it takes quite a large amount of moral courage for for
Hunter to step up in this situation.
And that's kind of what you need as an EXO.
The only thing that you don't see enough of from Hunter in
this movie is being genuinely good exo in terms of managing
executive standards of the of the platform.
He should have been all over that noise, quiet state stuff.
He should have been all over the damage control firefighting
stuff. He shouldn't have been donning a
suit and jumping into the fire. He should have been in charge of
the incident and. Ryan Felipe to get his ship to
get his fish off the boat. Oh yeah, that I think should
have left all that dirty fish tank on board.
Get that fish tank out of here, sailor.
What mental. Yeah, amazing.
Quotes. How would you like that cigar?
It's good, Sir. Well, don't like it too much.
They're more expensive than drugs, I.
Love that one, that was so good oh man.
Yeah, man. God, Captain Ramsey.
I don't trust air. I can't see.
I love that. That's good.
As well last. He's got great quotes.
He really does. He really does.
And and it's just an absolute brilliant performance by by our
kind of Saint of the podcast that is Gene Hackman.
That's just brilliant. The guy exudes menace when he
wants to. He shows vulnerability when he
wants to as well. Like this, the scenes when he's
like in his cabin, when he does look like legitimately
outnumbered and cowed by the world briefly, you know, but
it's when he's at Bay, when he's held like he does he like, you
know, I mean, like his performance, he shows us like
accident vulnerability while also being a fucking cycle, you
know? This is it, Yeah.
This is why he's such a good character.
He's quite complex. Like I said, he's he is a
genuinely intelligent guy. He's not.
He's not a a mad cowboy. Yeah, we're here to preserve
democracy in our classes. That one's brilliant.
It's true. It's true.
Yeah, I really agree with that. That's that's exactly how it
runs. It's it's one of the greatest
ironies of military service that it's an autocracy, creators,
defence, democracy. Yeah.
No, it's absolutely true. OK, Mobius, open the door.
The chain of commands, The chain I beat you with.
But just yet, like the scene, the scene when like the scene
when when Ravetti kicks off with the guy who he previously had
the dust up with, when he's, you know, standing guard and he's
like belting him. He's kicks his ass and he's
like, you know, unlock the door, Mobius.
How else we got needle drops? So soundtrack by Hans Zimmer and
I already talked about Eternal Father.
That's pretty much it for this movie.
IMDb trivia is really good for this movie.
There's a lot of really good stuff.
I'm excited. So we've talked about some of it
already. We've talked about Quentin
Tarantino, all that kind of stuff.
One really cool thing is as I mentioned at the beginning of
the movie, The U.S. Navy did not sanction or support
the filming of this movie in any way apart from the, I think the
provision of one retired technical advisor.
So to get the footage of the Alabama class submarine diving,
they got a tip off Tony Scott and the film crew.
The producers got a tip off from a sailor that there was a boat
movement happening out of pill and they got a helicopter, a
private helicopter and over flew the the sub whilst it was on the
surface. He got in touch with it with
you. Jeff told it to towards the leaf
essentially and it didn't leave and in order to stop being
filmed the boat dived, which is exactly what they wanted to
happen. Get in.
That's actually amazing. Yeah, it's cool.
Cool as yeah, the US Navy found the subject of the film
objectionable and inaccurate. And I think they they were
concerned about the the breakdown of, of naval
discipline that that kind of took place on board with the
Moody and stuff. It's not, it's not cool.
Is it quite funny, though, because this is 10 years after
about nine years after Top Gun, Tony Scott, Brookhimer Simpson.
And then if you couldn't get enough of that, and there's a,
there's a fair bit of breakdown of military discipline in that
movie too, proceeding below the Hard Deck and a lot good jazz
the the movie. So they got away with that shit,
right? Yeah, that's it.
Classic Fly, but it's Wafu's. The funding premise of the movie
is is kind of based on a bit of a true story from during the
Cuban Missile Crisis. As a Soviet submarine, the 59
attempted to infiltrate the US Navy blockade by running
submerged. By doing so it had been put out
of contact with it's central submarine command in in Moscow
and then when the US destroyers started dropping signal depth
charges to force the submarine to the surface, the Soviet
captain, Valentin Grigorovic Savitsky believes that war had
broke out between the US and the Soviet Union.
His sentiments were concurred on board by the the political
officer, a guy called Ivan Simonovich Marcinikov.
However, Savitsky's second in command, Vasily Akrapov, who's
also the flotilla Commodore, had refused.
All three needed to agree before launching, but because of our
contact for so long with nuclear orders, Akrapov convinced the
captain to surface and they were found themselves surrounded by
US destroyers. However, their comms were re
established and they received orders to return home, therefore
averting nuclear war. Crazy.
Just tough, man, yeah. So that's obviously 1962 when
that happened. Yeah.
Wild. Yeah.
Washington took the role just so he could play opposite Gene
Hackman. That's pretty cool.
Don Simpson and Joey Brookhammer originally offered Val Kilmer
one of the headlining rules, but he declined and years later
Kilman knew that it was one of the few films that you wish he
had agreed to be in. The role offered to Kilmer was
never formally specified, but could have been.
Could have been I think Hunter or Weps probably.
Yeah, probably a bit too young to be the the captain, I think
at this point at the Gene Hackman role.
Yeah. Plus I imagine I bet they got
Gene Hackman cast early for this and used that as like hey you've
got Hackman playing a terrible pissed off submarine captain to
get some poor people in. You know he was staffed.
Absolutely. He was, he was, he was the book
for this project. Here's a cool behind the scenes
facts. So the bridge set for the for
the I say bridge control room set for the submarine was built
on a big huge hydraulic gimbal so they could rotate and stuff
while they were doing it. Same one that they used for the
Hunt for October. I mentioned.
I can't mention there was a technical advisor for the movie.
Beard is listening to Technical Advisor and he was a commanding
officer of the real Yes S Alabama.
Get him. And he can be seen in the board
of inquiry scene. He's the man with no hair
sitting next to James Robot. So that's the one technical
advisor they did get. Guess you pass on the role of
Captain Ramsey Tommy Lee Jones. That would have been good
casting as well. Al Pacino was also off the role
of Captain Ramsey and Brad Pitt expressed sincere interest in
playing Hunter whilst Pacino was in the ring for Ramsey, but when
Pacino pulled out, so did pit. That would have been a really
good matchup. Think anyway, especially kind of
like isn't, isn't Brad Pitt like much kind of bigger than Al
Pacino as well? I'm sure Brad Pitt's like a kind
of bit taller than Al Pacino. So I would reflect with see the
kind of pit Pacino square up in in the control room because I'm
pretty sure there's a bit of a height disparity.
That would have been kind, yeah. On the subject of heights
disparities, Tom Cruise was also considered for the role of Latin
commander Hunter. Tom allegedly 5 foot 8.
Cruise, I can't Like Tom Cruise is obviously one of the many
heroes of the pods because he'll be in as as in these movies
eventually when we start covering them.
But I don't see him as a submariner really.
Just I just don't see him thriving in a submarine
environment and I can't explain why, but I can't seem being a
fighter pilot. I can't seem being a submariner.
You're a fundamentally different breed of of mariner.
And I mean, like a fighter pilot jobs a job for a little guy,
isn't it? You know?
And Gene Hackman is like 6 foot 2.
So just like, just Tom Cruise as wonder, Gene Hackman still as
the captain. The sediment she had punches
some of the face. You'd have to kind of squat down
a little bit. Would have just added this extra
bit of physical comedy. But he's just, oh, it's going to
go down here. Just sorry.
That's cool, man. I'm going to quickly cut across
to the goofs page. There's one mental one, which is
that last scene where they go to the headquarters.
It says US Naval Headquarters, but it's spelled Naval, as in
NAVEL. Oh.
No way. Like like belly button?
Oh, man, I didn't say that. Oh.
Or naval pipe. There is such a thing as a naval
pipe on warships, which is where the anchor cable goes down into.
And it's spelled that way. Right.
But. But not naval as in naval.
The Navy. Yeah, exactly.
Naval and the headquarters are in DC.
They're not in. Not in Pearl Harbour.
Yeah. Cool.
That's trivia. Should we do Notes from the
Peanuts gallery? A significant amount of these
reviews are more like this film's really good as far as the
basin kind of thing. It's hard to find funny stuff. 3
1/2 stars. Don't know who needs to hear
this right now but if some off the chain asshole and a Red Hat
gives you in legal order to start World War three, for the
love of all that is kindly please refuse.
Like don't turn that cake slash push that button slash, pull the
trigger. This means you TYSM, Senate
signed me and like, if you already did, you know, no
judgement or anything. Like peace I guess right?
In your last moments, if you have any, you could totally
watch this Tony Scott movie from the 90s.
About 30 aggro dudes with guns yelling at each other with close
quarters against the background of flashing panels at Dutch
angles and super harsh primary colours minus yellow for two
solid hours. Which if you're not out and wake
up again, will still be going on.
But if you manage to watch the whole thing, await.
Like if you can't sleep because you might have, you know,
started not a hot war that just maybe could consume more life on
earth in a majorly uncruel confragration, you will
inevitably find yourself wondering what happens, which
faction of yelling dudes, either the nuclear war right now or the
nuclear war maybe later camp will inevitably defeat the other
or come to a mutual understanding.
But it is possible the junior actions and the actions of those
like you. You might not have time to
finish the movie, but you can probably guess how it turns out.
Because it is a Hollywood movie and not real life, which is just
as inevitable and depressed. Fasting and bound to predictable
narrative, but have a super nice day.
OK, TTFN. TTFN.
Not a single full stop on that whole last paragraph, so
obviously I had to kind of have a few breathing breaks there.
Tony Scott's feel safe and close as he got to a chamber drama.
Basically a feature length rendition of those surveillance
fan sequences from Enemy of the State.
Everything seemingly lit by the glow of sauna and fluorescent
lights. Gene Hackman is also straight up
playing everyone's toss in this movie.
Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman comparing Dick sizes is
pretty entertaining for two hours, but take a drink every
time the spot Tarantino's dialogue washing ashore and
you'll be drowning in more than just Crimson Tide.
Watching ashore. Yeah, Tarantino's punch UPS
really stick out like a sore thumb.
A sore thumb that kind of rules. And all time Zimmer score and
Tony really using that red, green and blue lightning in the
sub with full all caps advantage.
Washington and Hackman shouting match and Dandel Feeney clearly
being turned on by holding a gun.
Dudes rocking underwater and they're great. 1 He have four
stars. Zimmer makes brass scream while
a bunch of damp boys lit in red and blue splash sweat everywhere
and shout into microphones. Are we not all damp boys yelling
in God's submarine? Right.
Most egregious military industrial complex oversell, I
think. I think in reality it's the idea
that two men could hold the entire nuclear arsenal hostage
with competing orders. I think there's more field safes
in the real world than that. I don't think it would have
turned into a mutiny, the mutiny situation.
I think it's also possibly the fact that SSBNS for some reason
the set up for like platoon level engagements with small
arms. Yeah, it's wild to me and but
it's not gross of ourselves, but it's a rather silly of
ourselves. Like I said, unless to go for
World War One kind of thing when they'll surface and send some
guys into a nearby time town to like harass enemy supply lines
and stuff. But this movie be better with
Doctor Jack Ryan. Doctor Jack Ryan on a submarine
before and it went pretty. Well, I did go pretty well.
I did go pretty well. It did go well, but I find it
hard to imagine in this particular case start I would
fit in there somehow. Yeah, his special skill is his
knowledge of Ramius's psyche, isn't he?
His special skill is that he knows to mention his wife at the
right time. Yeah, I don't think that comes
completely handy when she happened.
I think if he mentions Gene Hacker's wife, he'd be like,
well, she did just divorce me because I'm just too, too
irritating a submarine commander, so get out of my
control room. He.
Would be like, you know, that guy in 22 like young officer who
was like wife is just like terminally horned up and he just
said completely like disregards and he like tells her, Oh, I
need you like practise marching around the room and she's like
naked. He's like no clothes.
He'd feel like that. He'd be.
He'd be really difficult, I think.
Well, this movie better. We've talked to Richard Kimball,
Doctor. Richard Kimble wouldn't have let
that guy die, right? That was some pretty, that was
some pretty weak ass sepia that was being done.
You know some. Diabolical First Doctor Richard.
Yeah, Kimball would have been like full on breaking that
sternum sepia and he'd have dragged that guy back from the
great beyond. And it would have been been a
good win for a Chuck killer. That guy, that guy pipes the
casualties name over main broadcast and says he's dying
and and everyone else in the boat can hear that yeah, that's
pretty bad. That's against my hippo law, I.
Was going to say on the one MC we're going to do a HIPAA
violation at 3/2. With this movie, you've been
better with President James Marshall.
Get off my plane. President James Marshall would
have gone over from four of those Russian separatists
himself. There'd be no need for nukes.
He would have parachuted into Russia and punched that guy out,
bang in the face and then that's it called off.
You would have you would have gone in there Jason Alexander
playing a guy who knew the Russian separatist leader from
work and and he just like, oh, here I wanted to go shit managed
back psych and he just bang them out kick his.
Ass Is there a role for Peter Falk?
There's a weird little guy in this movie.
Fantasyland. I could see him as as like the
comms guy. Yeah, yeah, he's got, he's got
big WE WE energy. Just one more question, are we
sure the signal is complete? Unfortunately, I don't think,
yeah, just one more question. Like mid fantasy land.
It would be at least funny if he played like the Captain, but
that would totally destroy the film.
It would make it dash, but it would be kind of funny.
Just saying Peter Fault punching Denzel Washington in the face
just because I'd like to see Peter Fault beaten someone up by
trying to. But no.
Yeah, Sandy has got a spot on. He'd be classed as like comms
guy who's, you know, the end of his career.
He's just happy being a radio specialist.
He'd get that thing online in like 5 minutes.
You could do, yeah, He could be a really solid Petty Officer or
he could be chief of the boat, a chain smoking chief of the boat,
Yes, just like he's doing some piss off a fucking chief officer
or officer officer folk. He's got a flash on him.
He's got a big flash on him. You.
Know he knows how both are Subman films we've watched.
I was being a chunky fella in both of them, right?
It's a weird truth they're developing.
Yeah, yeah. It's weird truth.
It's like, it's like it's big boy season.
We've got to get a fucking huge chip for the boat, yeah.
Chang goes off the. Boat Yeah, this is a good movie
for Lieutenant Commander Samuel L Jackson, U.S.
Navy. Yes, he's he would be good in
this. He would.
I think he would be one of the other officers that I think
would have backed up Denzel, just not, not not on racial
lines just because he's he's got a head on his shoulders.
He's also, and he would have it would have quelled tensions a
bit more because I think he's got quite a direct word of
command. Like, no one's launching a
missile until I see a damn thing.
I don't know, Like, something like that, I guess.
Yeah. Like, imagine raising his voice.
Never be like. Well, yeah.
Through Jeffrey Rice, Jeffrey Wright could be in this movie as
well. Jeffrey Wright also could have
played a slightly less cliche chief of the boat as well.
Yeah, he definitely could. This He could be one of your
super brainiac senior rates who doesn't want to become an
officer, but you can. But they've got a brain on the
sides of a planet. That's a good.
I like that. I like that one.
That's cool. It's very believed.
This movie is not Prue or anti CIA completely absent score
unchanged. So I guess it just leaves me to
ask you guys, what's what's, what's your Ding Chavez award
for missed opportunity in the movie Chinese?
Did this film miss in there? The only one I can think of, and
I'll see you. I want to get your take on this
Weps Vigo Mortensen's rule seems a little bit unresolved.
Yeah. So he was stuck in a rock and a
hard place between the overwhelming pressure at good
point to to back the captain. He also had a personal
friendship with Denzel, which you see at the beginning of the
movie when he's at his kids birthday party.
So they've got they've got history.
They've served together before and he's stuck between that
loyalty versus friendship. What I and it was kind of left
hanging what I would like to have seen the boy.
There probably wasn't room for it in the movie, but another and
also because like that gap between missions aborted and
then meeting with Abra Robards, clearly months worth of
investigation is taking place in between, right?
So it wouldn't have made sense for them to then bump into Viggo
Monson because they've obviously been separated off presumably
both Ramsey and Hunter off doing like hold of a job somewhere
else in the meantime kind of thing.
If you were trying to think about it like too lit feel like
I am and ruin the fun. But what should have happened,
right, is maybe is another scene between Denzel and Webs where
they kind of go, look, I understand, like, why you did
what you had to do. But maybe he's still a little
bit pissed off. And he's like, but now I have
seen your true colours, and you're not the man I thought
you'd be in a crisis kind of thing.
Yeah. And then maybe, like, maybe he
tries to apologise to Hunter. And maybe Hunter doesn't
necessarily accept it as graciously as he could have done
because actually, you know, when it, when the shit really hit the
fan, he kind of let me down. Yeah.
And that friendship is forever altered.
You know, just my thought. Yeah, the opportunity flag.
Gene Hackman punch in the face another three or four times.
Just a totally, totally, totally underlined how much of A badass
Denzel Washington is. It's like an extended scene when
like, the Captain totally destroys his own respect from a
man by just punching Denzel Washington again and again and
again until he becomes like really tired.
It becomes really tired and that's awesome.
And he just bangs him out and won because he's been in
training for a hurricane this whole time.
Yes. Ah, the old rope, a dope.
The old rope dope, Well it's stricken the book.
You let your line about a shot, knock the shit out your face
until he tyres himself out and then he just three up 1.
Go guys. Since this is our 10th episode,
I thought it'd be fun to play a special game that I created.
Are you guys up for a little game I made called You Don't
know Jack I've. Got bad news for you?
The CIA did not invent crack, OK?
Yes, always, always up for these, for these games and
frolics. Gentlemen, we all know that St
Tom of Clancy has gifted us at the great statesman or assistant
spy, Jack Ryan. He himself has been portrayed on
the silver screen by many actors, not least of all Alec
Baldwin. And Alec Baldwin, he may not be
the most definitive Jack Ryan. That title, I believe, is held
by Harrison Ford. Some believe Chris Pine, but he
is the definitive John Francis. Jack Donaghy, the vice president
of East Coast television and microwave oven programming for
General Electric in the TV series 30 Rock by Tina Fey.
So, gentlemen, if you'd like to join me, what I'm going to do
now is read to you some partial quotes from the work of Saint
Tom of Clancy and from Saint Tina of Fey.
I want you to tell me where they come from and we'll see if you
really don't know Jack. Amazing.
I'm going to start with an easy one.
I'm going to need you guys to keep score because I'm probably
going to forget. And also for everyone I get
wrong that you guessed correctly, I'm going to take a
shot of this this ginger root. Experience speed.
OK cool. First one is no one has ever won
a land war in Russia. Thank you, Rock.
Damn it, you're all right. Hang on.
The full quote. The full quote is no one has
ever won a land one Russia. Not Napoleon, not Hitler, and
not Balki in the only 9th season of Perfect Strangers.
Take it all So hot. OK, second, second one to Roy.
You're correct. I didn't even give it Sonia a
chance to guess because you defeat too quickly.
That was a practise, right? Awesome.
Right. The next one is the CIA captured
a North Korean spy. The CIA captured a North Korean
spy. Jack Ryan.
No, Sonia, yeah. I'm going to go with Jack Ryan.
It is Jack Donaghy in season 6 episode 20 and 30 Rock.
The full quote is the CIA captured a North Korean spy so
we were able to arrange a prisoner swap next week in
exchange for my wife. They get their spy back.
The creative Hollister sweatshirts and a signed
headshot of Don Johnson. Loan would like destabilise
North Korea though. OK, here we go.
Third one, what the government is good for is collecting taxes.
I'm. Not sure I'm I'm giving that to
Jack Ryan, given that Jack Ryan at some point elects to become
the government. That's correct.
It is a Tom Clancy in person quote.
The full quote is what the government is good for is
collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing
people. It's not good at much else and
and that is Tom Clancy on Kudlu and Kramer 2003 financial show
on ITV America. Hold up his writing.
Is this fire or grave? Couldn't have before.
If you want to kick a tiger in his ass dot dot dot.
If you want to kick a tiger in his ass, dot dot dot.
I'm going to say I'm going to let Sanny a go first.
Actually throwing Sanny into the breach.
He's the full on hope this time. As really tricky without Folk Rd
because it could turn on into a full on weird Jake Ryan and all
the being made and some discussion.
I'm going to go with Jack Ryan, you.
Say Jack Ryan. OK.
It is Jack Ryan. It's If you want to kick a tiger
in his ass, you better have a plan for dealing with his teeth
from the teeth of the tiger. Which is the first?
Which is It's the first Jack Ryan junior novel.
OK. Next one, I'm calling up
Operation Righteous. That's got to be Jack Donaghy,
man, don't you? Yeah.
You're right. It is Jack Donahue.
The full quote is, I'm calling it Operation Righteous Cowboy
Lightning. OK, number six.
Now, I've only ever seen this kind of thing on dead people
during Operation Desert Storm. Now, I've only ever seen this
kind of thing on dead people during Operation Desert Storm.
Not Jack Ryan. Don't think it's time.
OK, I'm. Going to go Jack doggy.
Yeah, it's a rock. It's doctor.
Spa chairman. Full quote.
Now, I've only ever seen this kind of thing on dead people
during Operation Desert Storm. I actually wrote a report on it,
but my commander refused to pass it up to Saddam.
Cookie Times. That's absolutely brilliant.
That's it. I love it.
OK #7 you guys are kicking my ass here #7 if the first toddler
wears it, it has to be fashionable.
If the first toddler wears it, it has to be fashionable.
Jack Ryan. Hey guys, You're sure, right?
It's Tom Clancy and executive orders.
Man, I was hoping you'd go for like a Jenna Maroney there in 30
Rock. Now, man, it's just because
obviously with me, like reading, reading the Bear and the dragon,
like it like leans into the lot of our Jack Ryan family, man,
where are the first children kind of thing?
OK, but on that subject #8 just can't wait to take this sexual
energy back to Kathy. Just can't wait to take the
sexual energy back to Kathy. Danny, do you want to lead this
one? What are the many wives of Jack
Ryan? One is called Kathy.
Yeah, that's why. I'm willing to risk it are.
You going Jack Ryan? I'm going Jack Donaghy.
Rory gets it. Okay, so it's.
Ryan doesn't talk about sex. He's Catholic.
He thinks we have things about sex.
Correct, it's Devon. It's Devon Banks, the character
played by Will Arnett in season 2 of 30 Rock.
Full quote. Jack is enjoying the party.
Devon. How could it not be?
Can't wait to bring the sexual energy back to Cathy.
Jack. Devon, don't do this.
It may not be worth it. Devon Why not?
We're perfect for each other. She loves, she loves that I work
out loud and talk to people, and I love how she enjoys crawling
into cabinets and vents and other enclosed spaces, like
behind the dryer for instance #9 that child is better off in
Somalia. Jesus, I'm going to let Sonia go
on this one. I'm just casually drinking the
ginger right now because I'm getting so many wrong.
Broken. Yeah, you're just, you're just
like choosing to experience beige without the big Klingon
guy shouting experience beige at you experience beige.
That child is better off in Somalia.
Sonia what? Say not.
As the same energy as that doesn't storm cold.
You're saying, you're saying play rock.
I have to. Saying Jack Ryan, but from one
of the young Jack Ryan books. Well, Sonya's got it.
Yeah, I. Don't have any noxious to drink,
I'm sorry. Full, full, full.
Quote is oh God don't adopt that child is better off in Somalia.
It could be a pirate or a warlords concubine it.
Could be errant. Liz Leonard and two Jenna maroni
#10 no sense spooking him. We wait for him to come in nice
and close while we do our famous imitation of a hole in water.
Sonya. Famous invitation.
Fucking idea. It's.
Gotta be, it's gotta be. Yeah.
You're right, it's captain to Beloved in the hunt for October.
That's a really easy one. Next 1 #11 There are only two
ways we are beaten, we die or we give up.
And I'm not giving up. I'm gonna go Jack Donaghy with
that one. Sounds a bit too strong.
Yeah, Tom, the noise isn't it for war Draggy.
It's not elaborate enough. It's a little bit too strong for
Jack Ryan, but it is Tom Clancy. It's a John Clark novel.
Against all enemies. Yeah, about #12 The design
forces the sitter into what the Israeli military call is stress
position. That's just whoever made my new
disc. The design forces the sitter
into what the Israeli military call is stress position.
Yeah, it is. Full quote is Liz Lemon says
that's a bad couch, Jack. And he says it is unfortunate
the design forces to sit into what there's really military
call a stress position. It cuts off circulation to the
legs, while some are simply spreading out the rib cage,
making it difficult to breathe. You say if it was a true Jack
Ryan quote it would have always been included like the Hebrew
translation of of Stress Position.
It's the extra extra techno thriller granularity and detail.
Right, Final one. I don't know who's winning
anymore. I know I'm losing final one.
Son of a bitch. Both.
Oh, it's one or the other. One or the other.
Geez, Sonia, I'll let you take a lead on this one, man, since my
gambit failed when I thought there was.
Oh, it's both. It's both.
Frick at the end of it, you're upsetting.
Something Jack Ryan might say in non Florida October like in the
book version. Yeah, you go for Jack Ryan.
Yeah, it's Jack Donaghy, he says.
Son of a bitch. Banks.
What brings you to New York? Drawn to the phonic nature of
our skyline, You're probably thinking of the quote.
You son of a bitch. You son of a bitch from Hunt for
October. Got you on a technicality.
Just rise on technicalities. Technically correct.
The best. Case correct, because then a
quote, my friend, like an investigation.
Details matter. Yes, Rachel.
I've got bad news for you. The CIA did not even crack.
OK, God, cool. Well, thank you very much for
playing You Don't Know Jack where you proved that actually
you do know Jack pretty well, guys.
So congratulations, I guess. Or what is left to say is that
we've come, sadly once again to the end of another episode of
Clear and Present Dudes, the 10th episode of Clear and
Present Dudes. That's right.
If you enjoyed this episode, then please leave a comment or a
like on Apple podcasts. Send an e-mail please to
[email protected] if you have any suggestions or
any comments you'd like to make. And yeah guys, what movie are we
doing next? Whose choices are next?
Is it yours? Yours.
Rory? It's.
Amazing. Well.
I think that'd be yours, yeah. Well, in that case, we are
sticking with someone who's played one of the jacks, Ryan.
We are moving away from the US military, but I think the US
government is involved. We're going to do a film that I
last watched when I was being evacuated from Iceland when the
volcano went off. We're going to watch
Unstoppable, the Chris Payne runaway train disaster thriller.
Oh, I've never seen that. I haven't seen that one in quite
a while. Yeah, buddy the last time I saw
that I was on like an A pretty old airliner flying out of
Iceland after airline traffic had been stopped because the
explosion from the vault and and the decided that to troll were
like this wasn't an airliner that had like seat back consoles
and stuff. There was 1 little TV towards
like the cockpit and they literally put on this like
really washed out faded colour pirate looking VHS of
Unstoppable, a disaster movie as we're flying away from the
country with an exploding volcano on a really beaten up
old bone and it was like you're trolling us all.
So yes, we're doing Unstoppable. That's brilliant.
Hey, I'll tell you what. I really like Chris Pine.
Actually, I know we talked a little bit smack about he's not
maybe, maybe he's not the definite of Jack Ryan, but I
really loved him in Attentions of Dragons or Among Thieves
recently. He's a very charismatic
individual, very good actor. So yeah, looking forward to
that. It should.
Be good. Would like to to take one step
ahead for the next episode and answer your usual question.
Mike, how would this have gone down in Germany?
No train. No train.
All that is left for us to say then, guys, is we've been no
bits. Clear.
And present. Almost, almost got it.
Almost got it. Yeah.
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