4.40 avg rating — 465,098 ratings

"Mario Puzo's book is good, sometimes even very good. But he's not a particularly deep guy and he writes pedestrian prose. He was out to make a buck and more power to him. On the movie however, you have several of the greatest artists to ever work in film, functioning at the very top of their game. Coppola, Brando, Pacino, Keaton, DeNiro, Duvall, James Caan, John Cazale, Talia Shire, Sterling Hayden, Gordon Willis doing the luscious cinematography, Nino Rota's world famous score -- I mean, whew! Any writer would have a tough time competing with a line up like that. And Mario Puzo is just not that writer. "

3.94 avg rating — 179,494 ratings

4.12 avg rating — 388,851 ratings

"I'm not much on Clancy's particular brand of jingoistic espionage but at least he writes about smart people and The Hunt for Red October is a fun book. But this is one of the few movies where I felt Hollywood actually did cut off all of the fat and all of the extra characters and all of the extra sub plots and get down to the heart of the story. Now, Jack Ryan is a bit more of a super hero in the movie, and that was definitely one of the saving graces of the book, but it's almost more believable in a way. In the book, there are so many characters taking a hand in what is going on that it feels like Clancy has his own definition of what the word 'secret' means. The Navy, the CIA, the British Navy, various members of the US government, various members of the Soviet government are all involved some kind of way. That's all fine and good and I don't even know that I doubt that happens in real life but the more streamlined story of the movie was more fun. And even though the Russians in the movie are just as bumbling as they are in the book, it feels like conflicts that Clancy creates in the book are shaped better in the movie with a tad more respect for the enemy. Besides talking about the giant submarine is not as cool as watching float by on the big screen, let's face it.
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