The release of Clear and Present Danger, the third film in four years based on one of Tom Clancy’s best-selling political techno-thrillers featuring CIA analyst Jack Ryan, made one thing abundantly clear: Each film in the series was a distinct entity, connected to the other films and yet different. The first entry, The Hunt for Red October (1990), was a classic cut-from-the-Cold-War yarn of American-Soviet nuclear tensions, while Patriot Games (1992), which had Harrison Ford replacing Alec Baldwin as Ryan, was more of a family thriller, with Ryan’s wife and child being targeted by an offshoot of the IRA.

Clear and Present Danger, despite sharing the same director (Phillip Noyce) and star as Patriot Games and most of the production team, is an entirely different beast, eschewing the personal in favor of a broader political narrative about corruption and military malfeasance at the highest levels of government. It is both cutting in its indictment of how power corrupts even the best intentions and bravely optimistic in asserting that, not only can one maintain one’s sense of honor and integrity in a system rigged against such old-fashioned values, but very possibly make all the difference in the world. It’s a fascinating film to watch 25 years later in the pits of the Trump Era.

Ford returns as Ryan, although now he finds himself elevated far beyond the role of analyst to acting director of the CIA due to a terminal cancer diagnosis for the current director Admiral Greer (James Earl Jones, reprising the role for a third time). Ryan is an intelligence officer and occasional man of action, but not a politician, which is why Greer gives him some sage advice about politics in Washington: “Watch your back, Jack.” No amount of back-watching is going to fully protect someone like Ryan, who genuinely wants to do the right thing, and it isn’t long before he is unknowingly embroiled in an illegal covert operation run by CIA Deputy Director of Operations Robert Ritter (Henry Czerny) at the behest of the President of the United States (Donald Moffat), who is far from a full-fledged Trumpian scoundrel, but still willing to bend the rules, look the other way, and otherwise break the law if it gets him what he wants.

And what he and the other Washington officials want is control over the film’s “clear and present danger”: the Colombian drug cartels, which are here embodied by Pablo Escobar stand-in Ernesto Escobedo (Miguel Sandoval) and his shadowy advisor Felix Cortez (Joaquim de Almeid). As the film makes clear, the cartels are indeed deeply dangerous and violent, although the film’s title could just as easily extend to Washington bureaucrats whose clandestine activities run the risk of utterly undermining the rule of law (Clancy’s chief inspiration in writing the novel was the Iran-Contra scandal). It is telling that Clark (Willem Dafoe), the mercenary selected to run the illegal operation, turns from villain to redeemed hero alongside Jack because, in the end, he truly cares about his men, all of which were handpicked from the military and have no idea that they are engaging in officially unsanctioned activity south of the border.

Much of the film’s action unfolds in Colombia, and it features some of the biggest action setpieces of the Jack Ryan series, including a firefight in the jungle and an extended rescue operation that climaxes with Ryan hanging from the skid of a helicopter while being shot at from below. Even though Ryan is first and foremost a man of ideas and intellect, the films can’t help but turn him into an action hero. The ending of Patriot Games was just a hair short of being ludicrous, and Noyce and company seem to have learned that lesson, as Ryan’s action heroics here have a rougher, more realistic quality. Ryan, who is demeaned more than once as a “Boy Scout” by various corrupt officials, is perhaps the perfect American hero: smart, resourceful, willing and able to engage in violence when necessary, and above all honest and forthright.

Interestingly, the film’s best scene does not involve mano-a-mano fisticuffs, but rather Ryan hacking into Ritter’s computer and trying to download incriminating documents before Ritter can delete them. It is one of Hollywood’s first instances of using cyberwarfare as a trope (we would see it again the next year in Barry Levinson’s adaptation of Michael Crichton’s Disclosure), and it works via the mechanics of editing and rhythm, culminating in an angry faceoff as the two men simultaneously explode out of their office doors, which are right across the hall from each other. Ryan’s righteous indignation runs full-on into Ritter’s cynical calculation, and in that moment we truly feel the weight of decades of indoctrinated corruption coming down on the last honest man in Washington.

Copyright © 2018 James Kendrick

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