Connery RIP

My Sean Connery isn’t James Bond; it’s three films between 1987 and 1990, in which he demonstrated the utter mastery of the Abbe Faria role, the older warrior who introduces a younger man to the ways of the world. Malone is the most literal interpretation of Faria; explaining Chicago to Eliot Ness before being sacrificed to a tommy gun. In Last Crusade he’s the absentee father, only tangentially interested in his son’s life, who nevertheless manages to convey how to let go while he still has a chance. Red October is as much about Ryan’s hero worship as it is about anything else, marked by their brief meeting at the end and Ryan’s somehow believable willingness to do just about anything (jump out of a helicopter into the North Atlantic, track down a KGB agent in a missile compartment) at Ramius’ command. That I saw all of these films between the ages of 13 and 17 undoubtedly helped drive the message home.

Of course there was much more to Connery, and the roles he took in the years after 1990 are a mixed bag, but as is the case with Gene Hackman I very much wish he had continued to seek out complex roles that he was still capable of playing in his 70s and beyond. In any case, rest in peace Officer Malone, Dr. Jones, and Captain Ramius.