Clear and Present Danger

For this year’s President’s Day, I will be looking at “Clear and Present Danger,” released in 1994. Rita Kempley started her review by saying, “In reality, intelligence agency may have become something of an oxymoron, but not in the clandestine universe of Phillip Noyce's "Clear and Present Danger," an absorbing, if overlong adaptation of Tom Clancy's bestseller. More a cerebral dilemma than an action-packed adventure, the film explodes from time to time, but mostly takes place in offices. It is probably also the first espionage thriller to climax in a mouse-to-mouse cyber-feud.”

Harrison Ford is in here as CIA’s scruffy agent Jack Ryan, who looks like every day is just another bad day at the office. Simply an analyst in “Patriot Games,” Ryan is now an acting deputy director of intelligence when Admiral James Greer, played by James Earl Jones, is hospitalized with pancreatic cancer. With Ryan’s boss soldiers through chemotherapy, Ryan looks at the murder of a famous businessman who has some connections with the president, played by Donald Moffat.

When Ryan and his people see the murder is related to a Colombian drug lord, Ernest Escobedo (Miguel Sandoval), the president ultimately authorizes the national security adviser (Harris Yulin) and a CIA deputy director (Henry Czerny) to research secret paybacks in South America. Clark, played by Willem Dafoe, a CIA field agent that has high-tech communications material, is in charge of a handpicked mission from his hotel room.

With help from hackers and other tech specialists at Langley, Ryan realizes that his bosses and maybe even the president are not only misusing their authorities but jeopardizing the lives of innocents in the presence of Escobedo, a drug lord who isn’t as much of a threat to American serenity than coffee advocate Juan Valdez. Similar to Ryan, Escobedo has a villain, a trusted counselor, played by Joaquim de Almeida, who plans to get rid of him and take over the cartel.

Kempley mentioned, “Iced coffee runs in the counselor's veins as played by Almeida, whose performance is nearly as strong as Czerny's as Ryan's steely-eyed CIA opponent, Moffat's wickedly funny chief executive and Dafoe's dashing Bogota-based operative.” Anne Archer and the rest of Ryan’s on-screen family that was in “Patriot Games” have cameos here (Alexander Lester and Thora Birch), but Ford must face this alone for everybody.

Kempley noted, “There's a little bit of Mr. Smith in Ford's Jack Ryan and there's a little bit of Capra in the techno-thriller as written and rewritten by Donald Stewart, Steven Zaillian and John Milius.” Sadly, this has a heated argument where a ticked off Ryan really calls out the chief. This has “how dare yous” shouts, which makes it more adult when looking at the real problems compared to “True Lies.”

Kempley ended her review by saying, “Noyce, who also directed "Patriot Games," manages to keep the complex story lines from snarling even though he relies heavily on crosscutting. The technique, which he uses ingeniously here, enlivens scenes that are technologically driven and potentially deadly.”

I don’t know how good this is compared to “Patriot Games,” because I haven’t seen that yet. I do plan on watching that, especially since it is part of the “Jack Ryan” franchise, which I feel like watching all of. However, this is definitely one that you should watch for today, seeing how political and action-packed it gets. You will really get into this one.

Look out this Friday for the finale of this year’s “Black History Movie Month.”