Of all the films in the Jack Ryan film series, Clear and Present Danger always felt a bit underrated to me. After the more intimate Patriot Games, this film was a return to the large scale political thriller, this time focusing on the War on Drugs. With a complex plot and a strong cast, this film never seemed to get the attention it deserved.
A U.S Coast Guard boat stops a suspicious yacht and boards her when the occupants try to pass it off as a foreign boat. They discover the owners of the yacht, an American family have been murdered. It is soon discovered that the father of the family was businessman with strong ties to a Columbian Drug Cartel, as well as being a close friend of the President of the United States, President Bennett (played by Donald Moffat). Bennett is briefed on the incident by Jack Ryan (played by Harrison Ford) along with Deputy Director James Greer (played by James Earl Jones). After that meeting, Bennett meets with his National Security Advisor James Cutter (played by Harris Yulin), telling him that the drug cartels represent a "clear and present danger" to the U.S, unofficially giving him permission to get revenge for the killing of his friends, who in turn brings in CIA Deputy Director of Operations Bob Ritter (played by Henry Czerny) to assemble a Black Ops team led by John Clark (played by Willem Dafoe) to carry it out. The head of the cartel Ernesto Escobedo (played by Miguel Sandoval) begins to retaliate against the attacks with the help of his intelligence officer Felix Cortez (played by Joaquim de Almeida), who himself is conspiring to use the situation to overthrow Escobedo and take the cartel for himself. Meanwhile, Greer falls ill with terminal pancreatic cancer and Jack Ryan is named acting Deputy Director of Intelligence in his place. In over his head, Jack Ryan starts to unravel the secret and illegal mission that has been unfolding in Columbia, while keeping himself alive in the process.
Phillip Noyce returned to direct this film from a script by John Milius, Donald E. Stewart and Steven Zaillian. They do a good job of adapting the dense plot of Tom Clancy's novel, effectively juggling all the different plot threads that run throughout the film and bring it all together in the end. The manage to make a film with that much going on in it and keep all the different plot threads. They also manage to stage some great action sequences within that narrative, the biggest being the surprise attack on the SUV convoy midway through the film that Jack Ryan is right in the middle of. It's perfectly staged and intense as Ryan and his fellow agents are caught by surprise and have to fight their way out of an onslaught of gunfire and rocket launchers. The filmmakers also deserve points for putting their biggest action sequence at the middle point of the film rather than at the ending. It's a unique touch that you don't see often in these types of films.
This film has assembled an impressive cast for the film as well. Harrison Ford makes his second and ultimately final appearance in the role of Jack Ryan and continues to be great in the role. He does such a great job lending an every man quality to Ryan, relating to the audience in real and subtle ways how much his character feels in over his head when he has to take over Greer's job. Ford never saw Ryan as an action hero like Han Solo or Indiana Jones and never portrayed him as such, which is what makes him my favorite incarnation of the character. Tom Clancy's other big recurring character John Clark makes his first appearance here, portrayed by Willem Dafoe for this film, who does a great job with the character as the the leader of a Black Ops team implementing a series of assaults on the drug cartels of Columbia, especially that of Ernesto Escobedo. Both Harris Yulin and Henry Czerny make for suitably slimy villains for Ryan to outwit throughout the film. Joaquim de Almeida makes for an equally devious foe as he schemes to steal the cartel as he plays one person against another. James Earl Jones once again does so much with so little screen time, making the exit of James Greer a genuinely emotional moment (seriously, it was always a plot point in this film and novel that I didn't like). Anne Archer and Thora Birch make a return appearance as well in perhaps even more thankless roles as Jack's wife and daughter, who aside from Archer providing a key plot point and Birch reprising a cute moment from Patriot Games, really don't figure into the story much at all. Still, it's great to see them both come back.
I've always felt that Clear and Present Danger is a bit forgotten in terms of the Jack Ryan films and is not one that you hear about a lot, which is a shame as it's just as good as the first two films. It has a much larger scope than Patriot Games and feels a bit more akin to The Hunt For Red October with it's globe-trotting story line and numerous subplots. It remains an effective political thriller that I enjoy just as much as the first two films.
As I mentioned in my previous review for The Hunt For Red October, for a long time Patriot Games was my favorite of the Jack Ryan films. While that opinion has drifted a bit more towards the prior film as I've matured, I still do enjoy this film a great deal. As a follow-up to the previous film, it is a darker and more intense film, but also accomplishes what it set out to be, more of a showcase of the Jack Ryan character and his family.
Jack Ryan (played by Harrison Ford) is visiting London with his wife Cathy (played by Anne Archer) and daughter Sally (played by Thora Birch) when they stumble into the middle of an attack on Royal family member Lord Holmes (played by James Fox) and his wife and child by a radical faction of the IRA. Jack runs into the middle of the attack, taking out two of the attackers and incapacitating one as the remaining attackers flee. The incapacitated attacker is Sean Miller (played by Sean Bean) and one of the dead terrorists is Sean's younger brother. Distraught, Sean swears revenge on Ryan. However, with Sean Miller in custody and his compatriots seemingly on the run, Jack Ryan is confident that it's over. However, a daring prison break while Miller is being transported to jail changes things and upon convincing the faction leader Kevin O'Donnell (played by Patrick Bergin), makes a strike on the Ryan family back home in the United States, injuring both Cathy and Sally in the process. Enraged, Jack Ryan returns to his former mentor Vice Admiral James Greer (played by James Earl Jones) to resume his job at the CIA, determined to put an end to Sean Miller and his cronies once and for all.
Phillip Noyce picked up the directing reins for this film when John McTiernan was unable to return and is well suited to this film's stronger thriller aspects. Working from a script by Peter Iliff and Donald E. Stewart, the film captures the essence of Tom Clancy's novel (even if Clancy himself famously disagreed and asked his name be taken off the film, which always baffled me because aside from a more streamlined finale, the movie is fairly faithful to the source novel). Noyce does a great job crafting a riveting thriller from the attack on Lord Holmes at the beginning of the film to the attempted hits on the Ryan family to the suspenseful finale at the end of the film. Yet one of the most riveting and memorable scenes of the film is when Ryan and his colleagues are watching live satellite footage of a SAS strike on the suspected training camp of Sean Miller's faction. Watching it play out is chilling, especially when one of the men in the room casually confirms a killing on screen while drinking a cup of coffee. It's a moment like that in this movie that has really stuck with me. Then to finish it off, the film has one of my all time favorite James Horner scores, with these wonderful celtic flourishes that would re-occur again and again in his scores, notably in both Braveheart and Titanic.
Harrison Ford took over the role of Jack Ryan when Alec Baldwin either couldn't return due to a scheduling conflict or over disagreements with the producers. Either way, I feel this is one area where we traded up. As much as I enjoyed The Hunt for Red October, Ford is the superior Ryan to me. He is such a skilled performer and able to convey so much with a simple glance, such as in the aforementioned training camp strike. Sean Bean makes for a frightening adversary in the film, conveyed his characters wrath and grief so convincingly. Anne Archer does well as Cathy Ryan in what is probably a fairly thankless role, who spends much of the movie reacting to the things around her, but she does have good chemistry with Harrison Ford and along with Thora Birch at her most precocious as their daughter create a warm family unit the audience can't help but root for. James Earl Jones is the sole returning cast member from the previous film and once again manages to accomplish so much with his few scenes in the film in a way that only James Earl Jones can. Samuel L. Jackson makes a memorable appearance here as Robby, Jack Ryan's friend and fellow teacher at the Annapolis Naval Academy.
Patriot Games holds up for me as a superior action thriller and a great first outing for Harrison Ford in the role of Jack Ryan. It's one I've always enjoyed since I first saw it way back when and only helped solidify my interest in this series of films, even as they continued to be rebooted. For this one though, it stands along with the one before it and the one immediately following it as my favorites in the series.
I've long had an affinity for the various Jack Ryan films over the years, adapted from the novels of Tom Clancy, some more closely than others. With the upcoming Amazon Prime series centered on the character, I thought it might be fun to take a look at Mr. Ryan's varied cinematic incarnations. I'm starting at the beginning with what also happened to be my first introduction to the character as well, The Hunt for Red October.
In 1984, Soviet Submarine Captain Marco Ramius (played by Sean Connery) has been selected to command a new submarine called the Red October, a sub outfitted with a "caterpillar drive" a way for the sub to move stealthily across oceans without being picked up on passive sonar. Ramius is tasked with taking the sub out with her crew to perform test exercises alongside another submarine captained by Captain Tupolev (played by Stellan Skarsgaard). Once underway, Ramius swaps out their orders with false orders that they are to sail to the East Coast of America to conduct missile drills. Meanwhile, CIA Analyst Jack Ryan (played by Alec Baldwin) catches wind of the existence of the Red October and briefs United States government officials on the uniqueness of the sub as well as the threat it poses, especially when satellite images show the Russian fleet leaving and sailing towards America, suggesting a possible attack by a renegade Soviet Captain. However, Ryan has a different theory as he suspects that Ramius, who has no strong ties to the Soviet Union, may be intending to defect to the United States. Ryan is ordered to travel to the Atlantic to try and prove his hypothesis, rendezvousing with the USS Dallas, a U.S submarine captained by Bart Mancuso (played by Scott Glenn), whose sonar operator Jones (played by Courtney B. Vance) may have stumbled upon the Red October.
The film was directed by John McTiernan from a script by Larry Ferguson and Donald E. Stewart. Together they crafted an engaging thriller that was also a fairly faithful adaptation of the Tom Clancy novel. The film has a unique approach of brains over brawn, as each side strategically makes their moves throughout as each party nears their goal, playing a riveting game of cat and mouse with one another. The fact that McTiernan and his scriptwriters can make so many scenes of people analyzing, thinking and talking absolutely riveting is impressive in itself. It's not to say there aren't action sequences as there are several, including Ryan having to try and get from a helicopter to the USS Dallas in the middle of the Ocean or the climactic showdown between subs at the end. But there are also fascinating looks into the operation of the subs and how they navigate underwater, including a tense scene of Ramius and his crew navigating an undersea canyon.
The cast for the film is top-notch, led by Sean Connery who gives a such a compelling performance as Ramius you almost forget he's playing a Russian with his same Scottish accent. In all seriousness though, his performance is great in the film as his character's true motivations are revealed throughout the film. On the other side of the coin, we have Alec Baldwin in his one outing in the role of Jack Ryan who does a great job of conveying a character who is for the most part more comfortable on solid ground and behind a desk than in the field, which was something that always appealed to me about the character and Baldwin portrays that wonderfully throughout the film, especially in the climax of the film as he finds himself in the thick of the action. James Earl Jones has a great supporting role as Vice Admiral James Greer, who is the Deputy Director of the CIA, adding his usual gravitas to the role. Scott Glenn has a great turn as the Captain of the USS Dallas Bart Mancuso, who is always soft spoken and even keel which I thought was a nice touch and added a realism to his performance that Glenn often gives in his performances. Sam Neill gives a memorable turn as the Executive Officer of the Red October. And of course, I would be remiss if I did not mention the fact that Tim Curry has a supporting role as the ship doctor on the Red October, one of the first crew members to voice suspicions about what Ramius is really up to. Curry brings his usual unique presence to every scene he's in and I love it, but then again I am a big Tim Curry fan period.
The Hunt For Red October has long been a favorite of mine, as well as my family, pretty much since it came out. It was one that both my parents really liked so I have seen it many, many times. It's one I appreciate more as I got older and better understood everything that was happening in the film (in my younger years, I gravitated more towards Patriot Games, the film that follows this one). But as I've gotten older, I think my favorite has changed to this one. It's a bit smarter and a bit more unique in it's plotting. It values character over action and because of that the more suspenseful parts work all the better. It's an expertly made thriller with a fantastic cast to back it up and you can't ask for much more than that.
