Clear and Present Danger

Written by: Steve Zaillian, Paul Schrader, plus one Starring: Harrison Ford, Anne Archer, Harris Yulin, Willem Dafoe

The latest filmed version of a Tom Clancy bildungsroman, and frankly the whole exercise is getting a bit tedious. Good guys, bad guys, terrorists, drug smugglers, evil government plots... yeccch. Yawn me out. Ford (who has become the most stone-faced actor around, without a hint of the wit that made him a great Indiana Jones) returns as the feckless Jack Ryan, who somehow always seems to wind up in a whole bushel of physical danger that he was never really trained for. Somehow, he manages to survive, but he can never get over his astonishment that there are bad guys doing bad things out there, even in our own government (I'm shocked... SHOCKED...). Ryan is--as another character in the picture says--a Boy Scout, and as such he is pretty damned boring. Too bad too, because the production of the picture is first rate. Noyce handles all the action well, but then, if you're filming a Clancy techno-novel, the least you'd expect is a techno-film (one thing all three pictures have in common). One flaw is that Ford is never really in jeopardy until he stupidly GOES to Colombia (unlike in "Patriot Games," where the killers came after him).

Unfortunately, it's hard for me to get too excited about what makes Ryan so all fired up self-righteous. The truth is, I'm getting to the point where I don't think it would be a half bad idea to toss a few laser guided bombs and "insertion teams" at drug cartel installations. Ryan is presented as the hero here, but the real heroes (and the far more interesting characters) are the grunts who go into the jungle and get their hands dirty. Ryan's big display of heroism is yelling at the President (ooooohh), and testifying before Congress. Talk about an anticlimax! This must be the only film that fades out on the hero's back. It's a paper pusher's war for sure. (8/11/94)