Clear and Present Danger

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.