I've had this copy of The Cardinal of the Kremlin around for years (it belonged to either my dad or my brother), but this is my first read and, in fact, my first read of any Tom Clancy book.
My introduction to Clancy was through The Hunt for Red October movie, which is still a magnificent watch, though I found every other movie iteration to come after that one to provide diminishing returns.
Still, I was most curious to get into this one and find out why no movie was made in this case. Chronologically, it takes place after Patriot Games and before A Clear and Present Danger, both of which were of course made into films, so there had to be something that held it back.
My guess is that it was all timing. This book is out in 1988, and the film for Red October wasn't out until 1990. By the time the USSR was dissolving in 1991, there really can't have been much of an avenue to make Cardinal of the Kremlin, which you might guess by the title is a tale of the waning days of the Cold War. On top of that, the book goes all in on Star Wars, meaning the SDI laser defense system created by the U.S., and that itself was also gone by the mid 90s, which ultimately leaves this book without its basic infrastructure to tell its story.
The book itself, mind you, is thrilling enough, although even now it can't help but feel heavily dated, and not in a nostalgic kind of way. While it does offer up the vantage points of many characters and presents both heroes and villains on multiple sides of the conflict, it nonetheless presents defection and The American Way as the ultimate achievement. Obviously this is the entire point of Red October, so there's another knock against trying to make this one work as a movie.
All that being said, I got all ramped up with the brief appearances of Marko Ramius and the crew of the Dallas. I'm sure people bent over backwards to try and make the project work, but this book is simply stuck in a specific period of history and would have felt old as soon as it premiered.
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