comment #1

York "Budd" Durden says ...

American Pastoral is one of the finest Roth novels, if not the peak of his output. No movie version is warranted nor desired.

comment #2

lesterg says ...

Wasn't Noyce flirting with the idea of returning to the Jack Ryan series a year or so ago?

comment #3

MilkMan says ...

In this picture, Noyce's head looks like something out of a Chris Cunningham video for Aphex Twin. And when there is a director whose cinematic syntax is equivalent to Roth's prose, please let me know. Noyce is not that director. Noyce is John McTiernan with pretensions.

comment #4

gruver1 says ...

Wells to MilkMan: John McTiernan never had it in him to make a Quiet American, Rabbit Proof Fence or Catch a Fire, and he never made anything as good in the smart thriller vein as Clear and Present Danger.

comment #5

Rothchild says ...

What do you mean "based on a script by Kurt Wimmer?" It's not "based on a script" when that script is the movie.

comment #6

MilkMan says ...

I'll have to respectfully disagree with you, Mr. Wells. When I watch Noyce's non-popcorn films I see an action director who doesn't have the skill or nuance to make a top-notch drama, and then, when I watch his action movies, I see a director who feels he is clealy too good for the material, which he is not. Noyce is closer in talent to a Roger Donaldson and less a Ridley Scott. And when Noyce makes a movie as good (or as influential) as Die Hard, let me know.

comment #7

Mark says ...

Clear and Present Danger would be McTiernan's 4th best smart thriller. Unfortunately, so would the Bone Collector, so there's not a lot under the top 3. McTiernan does know how to fill up every shot though, even in the garbage pics.

comment #8

Tom Logan says ...

I sorta agree with mIlkman here,Noyce is a reliable director capable of making competent and entertaining films and every so often pull out a great one (which is what Donaldson tends to do).
Noyce does make his strongest work when filming in his home country,thats why Dirt Music appealed to me the most out of all the mentioned projects,it was a strong novel with interesting characters and the potential for some strartling photography.

I'm suprised how adamant Cruise is on Edwin A. Salt,i read a feb 07 draft and it was a fine action-thriller but could easily look like a Bourne rip-off.

comment #9

Josh Massey says ...

"...and he never made anything as good in the smart thriller vein as Clear and Present Danger."

Now I liked Clear and Present Danger, but it wasn't a tenth as good as McTiernan's entry in the series. Or, obviously, Die Hard.

comment #10

gruver1 says ...

Clear and Present Danger was far and away the best Jack Ryan film, ever. The most adult, complex, the best acted, the most intriguing, the best villains, the best coffee. Don't even mention McTiernan.

comment #11

Josh Massey says ...

Agree to strenuously disagree.

I'm not going to get all film historian here, but I can't think of a better directorial one-two-three punch than McTiernan had with Predator, Die Hard and The Hunt For Red October. Three absolute action classics in a span of four years.

His production since has been, well, a tad less successful. In the sense that "tad" equals the span of the Milky Way. Noyce has certainly been a better director from 1992-on, no question.

comment #12

Ben C says ...

Ang Lee could do Roth.

Apatow, if he was any interested in film language, could do Roth as well.

Portnoy at least.

comment #13

Ben C says ...

All that being said...

What the fuck happened to Phil Alden Robinson?

comment #14

Jay T. says ...

"When I watch Noyce's non-popcorn films I see an action director who doesn't have the skill or nuance to make a top-notch drama"

I disagree - I thought The Quiet American was a pretty damn good drama...

comment #15

StoneFan1 says ...

If being compared to Roger Donaldson is supposed to be some sort of insult, IT ISN'T! Sorry!

Mr. Noyce is a top-of-the-line professional. End of story!

comment #16

MilkMan says ...

Sorr, StoneFan, but it was supposed to be an insult, and it is an insult to be compared to Roger Donaldson, who is a perfect example of the Fat Happy Hollywood Hack, a mediocre filmmaker who comes to Hollywood for nothing more than a paycheck, who contributes nothing to the art other than the ability to get the fuck out of the way and let the system work as smoothly as possible. In other words, he's a tool.

comment #17

LexG says ...

BANK JOB OWNS YOUR ASS, MilkMan.

So does No Way Out. And The Bounty. And fucking COCKTAIL. DO NOT DISS THE TAIL SON.

comment #18

lipranzer says ...

I love NO WAY OUT and THE BANK JOB (as well as SMASH PALACE, THIRTEEN DAYS, and THE WORLD'S FASTEST INDIAN), but I wouldn't use COCKTAIL in defense of Donaldson. That may be on my short list for the worst movie ever made.

Back to Noyce; I agree he's been a more interesting director these past few years; I certainly agree on the merits of QUIET AMERICAN and RABBIT PROOF FENCE (the latter was on my top 10 list in 2002), I like CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER a lot, and of the three major set-in-Africa movies of 2006, BLOOD DIAMOND and THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND got all the press, but I actually preferred CATCH A FIRE, even though I had problems with it. Btw, I keep meaning to catch one of his early films, NEWSFRONT; anyone know if it's any good?

comment #19

BurmaShave says ...

CATCH A FIRE was a total dud despite some decent moments. HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER kicks CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER's ass, and I like the latter a lot. I really wouldn't put anything Noyce has done against PREDATOR or DIE HARD in terms of sheer filmmaking skill. Wells I know he's your friend but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

comment #20

Malone says ...

HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER is the best film by either McTiernan or Noyce.

There are good films, there are great films, and there are Masterpieces. RED OCTOBER is a Masterpiece. DIE HARD is a half-Masterpiece: the outside-the-building stuff (FBI, limo-driver, twinkie cop) borders on eighth grade. PREDATOR is a great film. QUIET AMERICAN is a great film. CLEAR AND PRESENT is darn good.

comment #21

LexG says ...

Lipranzer:

Newsfront is quite good; Saw it at the Egyptian three or four years ago, with Noyce in attendance and doing Q and A as part of a retrospective. I got the feeling it means more to native Aussies than to us, and it's very episodic and a little scattered, but has a nice muckraking zeal that's very much of its time, and a fairly quick pace, though the sleeker stylistics and narrative tautness of his Hollywood productions wasn't quite in place yet.

I seem to remember from one of the Jack Ryan DVDs that Ford hadn't seen Noyce's stateside efforts when they were choosing directors for PG, but lit up upon finding out Noyce was behind Newsfront, which he had liked.

I think Heatwave is the other major Noyce from that era; Never saw that one.

comment #22

bluelouboyle says ...

MILKMAN - have you seen 13 days? Roger Donaldson's best movie. A great, tense cold war drama - with hardly any action. Only flaw is Kevin costner's weird Boston accent. NOT the work of a hack.

comment #23

Count Thread says ...

The Hunt for Red October is the best Jack Ryan film, and a great film, period. Full stop.

Clear and Present Danger, and to a far lesser degree Patriot Games, are good movies, but so-so adaptations of what were GREAT novels (written back before Clancy started phoning everything in).

Hunt is also compulsively watchable, whereas PG and Danger are not. If I'm flipping channels, I always get sucked into Hunt-- the others have good *moments*, but they don't add up to a complete hole.

And Die Hard and Predator are the same in this regard-- compulsively watchable, and extremely influential in their own rights. Die Hard is still rightly held up as one of the best action films of the modern age (and looks better every year we get lousy imitators). As for Predator, of all the movies in this thread, which would you rather watch on a Saturday afternoon?

Wells is being elitist, and forgetting just how perfect-- absolutely perfect-- that McTiernan troika is.

comment #24

StoneFan1 says ...

Once again, Noyce and Donaldson are first class professionals in a world full of hacks. McTiernan had a few things going on years ago, but he's dead today.

"Newsfront" has been airing on IFC in recent weeks and I thought it was special in that it realistically captured an era fading away without drawing attention to that fact. Solid effort all around. Noyce's best film (by far) is still "The Quiet American."

comment #25

lipranzer says ...

Thanks for the info on NEWSFRONT. I'll check it out soon.

CATCH A FIRE had problems (it lacked a certain dramatic fire), but it was the only one of the three Hollywood African movies that year to have an African character at the center, instead of telling the story through a white male. Plus, it was a three-dimensional character, instead of being a noble or a savage - you did wonder at the end whether he was a freedom fighter, a terrorist, or maybe a little of both. And Derek Luke did a good job capturing that.

I like McTiernan, but he hasn't done a good film since his remake of THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR. Also, I wouldn't call Tom Clancy a "great" novelist. He's good at plot, but he overloads on describing the machinery and weaponry the characters use, and to put it politely, he's a bit of a neanderthal when it comes to his women characters.