The third film based on Tom Clancy’s best-selling espionage tales, “Clear and Present Danger” is a conventional but highly executed thriller, featuring Harrison Ford in a suitable part as CIA agent Jack Ryan.
Ford returns to the Ryan role after his first effort, ”Patriot Games,” in 1992. You may recall that Alec Baldwin originated the part
In this tale, Ryan gets a top-level White House intelligence job, when his boss, Admiral Greer (James Eral Jones) is diagnozed with a terminal cancer.
He is assigned none too exciting drug investigation, after a close friend of the President (Donald Moffat) is murdered by Colombian drug cartel.
When Ryan discovers that the President’s wealthy friend was in league with the cartel, the President’s national security adviser (Harris Yulin) and an ambitious CIA deputy director (Canadian actor Henry Czerny) send a secret paramilitary force into Colombia to take care of the drug lords.
When the force is captured and abandoned by the President’s lackeys, Ryan must rescue them, aided only by the renegade operative Clark (Willem Dafoe), endangering his life and career.
Ford, a major if also self-effacing actor, carries the entire picture on his solid soldiers, reaffirming his status as Hollywood’s most reliabile and effective action star.
Aussie Phillip Noyce, who also helmed the 1992 thriller, directs in a skillful but impersonal manner. Technically, the movie is well crafted, offering the audience the requisite goods of the genre.
Oscar Nominations: 2
Sound: Donald O. Mitchell, Michael Herbick, Frank A. Montano, Arthur Rochester.
Sound Effects Editing: Bruce Stambler and John Leveque
Oscar Awards: None
Oscar Context:
“Speed” won the Sound and
Credits
Paramount
MPAA Rating: PG-13.
Running time: 141 Minutes.
Directed by Phillip Noyce
Screenplay: Donald Stewart, Steven Zaillian, John Milius
Released: August 3, 1994
Cast
Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan
Willem Dafoe as Clark
Anne Archer as Cathy Ryan
Joaquim de Almeida as Felix Cortez
Henry Czerny as Robert Ritter
Harris Yulin as James Cutter