Clear and Present Danger (Film Review)

1994 Paramount Pictures
Directed by: Philip Noyce; Written by: John Milius, Donald E. Stewart, and Steven Zaillian
Starring: Harrison Ford, Willem Dafoe, Anne Archer, and James Earl Jones
MPAA Rating: PG-13; Running Time: 141 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 10/10

Jack Ryan would rather be at a blackboard teaching history class, or sitting behind a desk analyzing data. Instead, he's briefing the president on matters of national security. Unfortunately for the morally pure Jack, the president is a dishonorable slimeball. It seems one of the president's best friends had been laundering money for the South American drug cartel, and the man and his entire family have been murdered by them after he skimmed millions from their profits. Without telling Jack, the president discreetly orders a covert military operation to punish the cartel....while sending a clueless, trusting Jack to testify before congress to get the funding for what he thinks is a benign operation. Thus begins a drug war between the U.S. government and the cartel...one Jack finds himself smack in the explosive middle of.
1994's Clear and Present Danger, based upon the Tom Clancy novel of the same name, doesn't hold the viewer's hand or tell them what to think. It's a thinking man's action film through-and-through, featuring a violent centerpiece that just might be the most muscular action scene of the 90's. It's certainly my favorite, and here I must admit my bias. As a teenager, I ate up the 90's Tom Clancy aesthetic, from the fine-tuned military details, to the audible sound of footfalls on the capitol steps. Add my favorite actor, Harrison Ford, a perfect choice for Ryan's everyman moralist, even if he's a bit older than the character as Clancy wrote him, and a stirring James Horner score, and this film seems tailor made for a 13-year-old me...or a 40-year-old me.
Thanks to Philip Noyce's crisp direction, and a fine-tuned script, Clear and Present Danger delivers, revealing further thematic depth and layers of its intricate plot with each viewing. Playing Ryan for the second time, Ford seems to have found his spirit animal. His righteous anger is thrilling, and every moment that he discovers just how low his fellow bureaucrats will go seems to make him physically ill. Every actor brings their A-game here, from Willem Dafoe as the hard-edged operative, John Clark, to Miguel Sandoval as a wry, Escobar-influenced drug lord, to Raymond Cruz as a top tier military sniper. I love everything about this movie, but if you're not me, and you like both action and complex, labyrinthine plots, or even just a great Harrison Ford performance, there's still a great chance you'll enjoy Clear and Present Danger.