CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER

(August 1994, U.S.)

Tom Clancy's character of Jack Ryan has to be the most honorable, disgustingly-self-righteous character in Washington D.C. since James Stewart's Jefferson Smith in MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939). It almost makes you fully comprehend what a bunch of scum-sucking crooks D.C. is REALLY filled with!

(but I politically digress...sorry)

As in Clancy's original novel, Jack Ryan (played by Harrison Ford) is appointed Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Acting Deputy Director and discovers that he's being kept in the dark by colleagues who are conducting an illegal covert war against drug lords in Colombia; an action ultimately authorized by the President of the United States himself in retaliation against the murder of an American businessman and his family aboard their yacht, who just happened to be the President's close friend. The man was murdered because of his ties to a drug cartel, having skimmed over $650 million from the cartel (I suppose when you steal THAT kind of money, someone's going to declare war to get it back!).

Like THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER (1990) and PATRIOT GAMES (1992) before it, CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER doesn't fail to deliver the kind of political thrills and action one would expect from a Tom Clancy story that DOESN'T involve the likes of Ben Affleck. And nearly everything Harrison Ford does on screen is more than fine by me. I would just really love to know why it's only in the movies that our government, intelligence agencies and military know how to take swift and decicive action against our enemies and blow them all to shit. In reality, our country seems completely incapable of capturing and killing the one man who was most directly responsible for the events of September 11, 2001 (you know who he is). Is there a REAL Jack Ryan out there in our government and can he bring us this kind of American justice before we reach the tenth anniversary of 9-11? One can only hope.

Favorite line or dialogue:

Jack Ryan: "I won't let you dishonor their memories by pretending you had nothing to do with it!"
The President: "How dare you come in here and lecture me!"
Jack: "How dare YOU, sir!"
President: "How dare you come into this office and bark at me like some little junkyard dog? I am the President of the United States!"