Clear and Present Danger

An American businessman and his family are found murdered aboard their private yacht. The culprits involved are members of a Columbian drug cartel; unbeknownst to them, their victim was an old friend to the President of the United States (Donald Moffat); unbeknownst to the President, his murdered friend was skimming millions from the leader of the cartel, a one Ernesto Escobedo (Miguel Sandoval). Regardless, the President seeks retribution, but leaves the dirty work in the hands of two men, National Security Advisor James Cutter (Harris Yulin) and CIA Deputy Director of Operations Robert Ritter (Henry Czerny), who secretly organize a black-ops team to wage an unsanctioned private war against the cartels.

When CIA Deputy Director of Intelligence James Greer (James Earl Jones) is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, his job is appointed to analyst Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford), who then gives his word to U.S. Congress that all funded operations in Columbia are strictly reconnaissance based. Ryan is then assigned by the President to retrieve the laundered $600 million in frozen assets. Subsequently, and to his dismay, he gradually learns of the covert strikes being carried out against the cartels. Amidst the political and international crossfire, and with an honor bound duty to rectify right from wrong, Ryan must contend with conspirators on all sides, including Cutter and Ritter, a shadowy field operative John Clark (Willem Dafoe) and Escobedo’s right-hand man, Félix Cortez (Joaquim de Almeida), who himself schemes to overthrow Escobedo and his fellow drug lords for total control.

Clear and Present Danger was released August 3, 1994 and ranked in domestically as the 7th highest grossing film of the year with $122 million and in 10th place worldwide with close to $216 million. Remember this? Remember when summer blockbusters weren’t regulated to alien disasters, superheroes or boy wizards? Ages ago, it seems. The target demographic has gotten younger and/or more devoted to the fickle and feverish fanboy generation. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve nothing against those kinds of film, but after revisiting this third installment to the Tom Clancy-Jack Ryan series, I’m reminded just how thoroughly entertaining reality-based action thrillers can be – movies for adults that aren’t stuffy dramas or art films vying for Oscar gold; just straight-up entertainment for grown men with casually topical interest in real world affairs, who can enjoy said content when fictionalized.

Clear and Present Danger is about as unpretentious as it gets. It is entirely plot oriented, with a rigorous narrative that splits into multiple lanes, intersecting only when to tie-up loose ends or to keep the larger story moving forward at a constant pace; the film never slows, but it doesn’t truncate either. It’s a steady conveyor belt of characters, set-up and action, where virtually every scene exists primarily so that information can pass through it, on to the next. Nothing happens in the film without the audience knowing why. It’s only a question of how Jack Ryan will manage the consequences.

      
The 1992 predecessor Patriot Games told a more dramatic story in that the central conflict was a more personal one between Ryan (and his family) and IRA extremists. Here, the stage is more outwardly political, focusing on the US drug war and corrupt Washington power-players with no regard for congressional authority; though, honestly, it’s really just an action movie. Still, the hefty cast delivers a consummate whole. Think back to when you were a little kid playing Army with your friends...

Your character, so to speak, was not altogether complex. Neither you nor your friends were digging deep into the psychologies or dishing out eccentric performances. You guys were just running around from ditch to ditch, barking orders or speaking in hushed tones when the enemy was near. And yet you were all absolutely wrapped up in the moment, totally committed to the make-believe. It was a game that your imaginations took seriously. That’s how I would describe the cast in this film. Nothing particularly ambitious is happening with the performances, but the actors are playing the adult-modified, political intrigue equivalent of little kid-Army with the same degree of enthusiasm.

You gotta love the way Henry Czerny’s smarmy Ritter sneers with satisfaction at every upper hand or the way Sandoval twirls his aluminum bat with deadly intent, or even Moffat’s portrayal of a President who, at times, behaves almost as if he’s mentally retarded – a Commander-in-Chief with the emotional state of a child. Anne Archer returns in good form as the quintessential ‘loving wife’, though she has little to do this time around (this film, even more of a boy’s game than the previous) other than look concerned or smile consolably to her husband. Willem Dafoe may not fit the physical descript of John Clark from the novels but he does make for a rugged, well tanned and convincingly dangerous live-action version in his own special way, with that signature feral mug and thin gravely voice. Dressed in a camo jacket and blue jeans, and sporting submachine gun, Dafoe makes for a pretty intense looking dude.

Clear and Present Danger stands as a reminder of what action scenes used to look like before frenetic editing/shaky-cam and Snyder-like digitized slow motion. The film’s best example, and probably its best scene, involves a convoy of SUVs carrying US diplomats and security through downtown Bogota, Columbia that comes under ambush by cartel soldiers. Director Phillip Noyce (who also helmed Patriot Games) does proper by establishing the geography of the scene early on as the convoy is led down a narrow side street and we the audience are given clear perspectives from street level, the pillaring rooftops and the men inside the targeted vehicles. The attack comes fast and vicious, and made palpable is the intense panic as these guys find themselves at the ass-end of a tactical deathtrap.

Of course, the dramatic success of the sequence hinges on the main character involved, which brings up the film’s overall ace: Harrison Ford. In continuing this review’s theme of ‘remember when?’ remember when leading men action stars were, in fact, men? Not boys, not heroes filtered through feminization i.e. self-absorbed, glistening hard bodies, pirate eyeliner. Ford deserves credit for landing not one, not two, but three different franchise characters in which he seemed born to play. Ford is Jack Ryan, as unceremoniously American as apple pie. And as an action star, Ford has always distinguished himself from the rest with an intrinsic realism he brings to the table.

Here’s a guy who never resorted to muscle flexing or balletic slow motion while wearing shades or flavor-of-the-month Asian choreographies such as Bourne Filipino fighting or Woo-Ping wire antics. Ford’s physicality translated perfectly the pulpy (and often comedic) fisticuffs of Indiana Jones. Here, in the real world of Jack Ryan, he traverses the action with rattled awkwardness, too caught-up in the inertia of the scene to pose for the camera in perfect form. Watch closely during the convoy attack as Ford’s performance emphasizes the haphazard chaos: “Back up! Back up!” he shouts to oncoming rocket fire – the way he scrambles from backseat to steering wheel or his desperate attempt to get car a door open to save his fellow man.

And Ford is genuinely acting during all of this, emoting palpable fear and a heightened state of distress. He also does an admirable share of his own stunts. That’s actually him driving a flaming car, diving foreground from an explosion or, in the film’s climax, jumping onto the landing skid of helicopter. Lastly, the very concept of Jack Ryan epitomizes the thinking-man action hero in that the character never once touches a gun throughout the film but, instead, walks alone into Escobedo’s Columbian fortress armed only with a business card and a tape recorder.

Clear and Present Danger may be an easy target for today’s cynics. Its pre 9/11conflicts are unfairly dated and James Horner’s score hits you upside the head with a hammer every time something “patriotic” happens. But the film does skewer US administrative power with a critical eye and there’s a certain anthem of justice in the final scene when Ryan confronts the President and tears into him with steely reserve; cathartic for an audience (particularly an American one) all too familiar with the bureaucratic bullshit that permeates this nation all the way up to its oval office. But I’m simply entertained by both the film and its star for reasons mentioned. It’s a good and clean, straightforward genre film with an everyman hero worth rooting for. I would rank it 2nd best among the Tom Clancy adaptations. Coming in at No. 1 would be The Hunt for Red October, one of my all time favorite films.



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