CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER: 4K UHD Blu-ray reissue (Paramount, 1994) Paramount Home Video
Uber-conservative, Thomas Leo
Clancy Jr., better known in literati circles as Tom Clancy, brought a new
American spirit to the traditional spy thriller with the publication of his
very first novel, The Hunt for Red October (1984), an edge-of-your-seat
page turner that managed to make even the most meticulously detailed espionage
palpably engaging. Clancy had hoped the book would sell at least 5000 copies, a
figure, eventually ballooning to more than 300,000 in hard cover and 2 million
in paperback after a winning endorsement from President Ronald Reagan, who
thought it ‘the best yarn’. Of the 20 novels soon to follow it, penned before
Clancy’s death in 2013 (several co-authored by Mark Greaney), a record-breaking
17 became bestsellers with more than 100 million copies cumulatively sold
around the world. With few exceptions,
Clancy wrote and published a novel virtually every year, his pantheon of achievement
eventually finding its way to Hollywood, transformed into even more
widely-appreciated spectacles of action. Undeniably, Clancy’s most enduring fictional
creation is Jack Ryan, the seemingly ‘every man’ who battles darker forces with
a realistic reluctance. On screen, Ryan had been incarnated by Alec Baldwin,
then, Harrison Ford, and later, Ben Affleck, Chris Pine, and John Krasinski,
each actor bringing varying traits to the forefront.
Ironically, 1992’s Patriot Games,
only superficially based on Clancy’s novel, became a resounding box office
success to guarantee another outing with Harrison Ford cast as Clancy’s titular
titan of integrity. Paramount producers, Mace Neufeld and Robert Rehme reunited
with Phillip Noyce, screenwriter, Donald E. Stewart and co-stars, Harrison
Ford, Anne Archer, Thora Birch and James Earl Jones for Clear and Present
Danger (1994), a far more involved, and arguably, the best of the Jack Ryan
film franchise. Weighing in at a hefty 141-minutes and budgeted at $62 million,
Clear and Present Danger anted up the espionage stakes, on occasion,
veering dangerously into James Bond territory with its affinity for rocket
launchers and high-tech missiles. However, the story is mercilessly grounded in
Clancy’s grittier dark edge, with writer/director, John Milius and
screenwriter, Steven Zaillian contributing to its narrative heft. Not all the
critics were impressed. ReelViews’ James Berardinelli suggested too much plot
had been layered onto featherweight characters, more cardboard than carefully
drawn, with Ford’s Ryan a “disgustingly virtuous…Superman without his cape.”
In hindsight, Ford’s everyman has weathered
this critique and the substantial machinations of the movie’s involved plot
extremely well. There is a reason, actors of Ford’s ilk are considered ‘stars.’
Ford’s built-in persona precedes anything he might have otherwise achieved in
this densely packed and slickly packaged thriller. Better still, the so-called
‘cardboard cutouts’ are drawn from a gallery of incredibly gifted and subtly
nuanced actors who do not need to go all that far to find both quality and
truth in their performance: Willem Dafoe (as mercenary John Clark), Joaquim de
Almeida (a superbly superficial leader of a Columbian drug cartel, Col. Félix
Cortez), Miguel Sandoval (devious, yet brutal, as Ernesto Escobedo), Henry
Czerny (spookily unscrupulous, Bob Ritter), Donald Moffat (an embittered and
curiously emasculated President Bennett), Benjamin Bratt (butch recruiter, Cpt.
RamÃrez), Raymond Cruz (cunning black-ops sniper, Domingo Chavez) and Ann
Magnuson (as ill-fated Moira Wolfson). Best of all, Terrance Marsh’s production
design and James Horner’s flag-waving overtures add the prerequisite ‘yahoo’
quality to the penultimate ambush and rescue of the captured Sandoval and
Ramirez.
In all, Clear and Present Danger
is a heart-palpitating thriller with few equals; the intensity in its
complicated and ever-unraveling narrative never muddying the clarity in Noyce’s
visual storytelling. We begin with a U.S. Coast Guard patrol boat trying to
contact the captain of a private yacht, ‘Enchanter’, sailing into
uncharted waters and much too far from its home port in Mobile. The Guard makes
a gruesome discovery inside the ship’s blood-soaked state rooms. Virtually all
aboard have been murdered by drug couriers, their bodies thrown overboard. We
quickly learn the yacht belonged to an international businessman who also
happens to be a close personal friend of presiding U.S. President Bennett.
Assigned to analyze the evidence, Jack Ryan deduces the President’s friend was,
in fact, a front for Columbian drug smugglers and a cartel from whom he stole
roughly $650 million. Bennett is flabbergasted. On Ryan’s advice, Bennett
fields questions from the press in support of the friendship he shared with the
dead man, thus diffusing the press having another field day with a White House scandal.
Bennett also launches a counteroffensive against the cartel representing ‘a
clear and present danger’ to the United States. At this juncture, Vice Admiral
Jim Greer is stricken with terminal pancreatic cancer. Greer appoints Ryan as
his acting Deputy Director and encourages him to go before a Congressional
committee requesting funds for an ongoing CIA operation in Colombia.
Determined to keep Ryan in the
dark, James Cutter (Harris Yulin) turns to the CIA's Deputy Director for
Operations, Bob Ritter for a little smoke and mirrors. Together, this pair
drafts an official-looking document to give them permission to wage a private
war against the cartel. Ritter orders Clark to assemble a black-ops team with
the help of John Clark. Capt. Ricardo Ramirez is hired to lead a highly skilled
ground force on a perilous search-and-destroy mission in Columbia. Little by
little, this team begins to dismantle Ernesto Escobedo’s well-oiled underground
operations. Increasingly, Escobedo is displeased by this escalating cost of
doing business, and even more short-tempered with his henchman, Félix Cortez
for allowing the mysterious carnage of his vast, if illegal empire to continue
at a staggering loss of $650 million. Befriending FBI Director Emil Jacobs’
(Tom Tammi) private secretary, Moira Wolfson, Cortez learns Jacobs is planning
a trip to Columbia to negotiate terms for some frozen assets with the Attorney
General. Enterprisingly, Cortez realizes
he can kill two birds with one stone - literally: framing Escobedo for Jacobs’
assassination, and that of his entourage, also to include none other than Jack
Ryan.
As Cortez conspires with Cutter to
assassinate Escobedo and take over his cartel, Cutter in tandem agrees to turn
a blind eye to Cortez as he systematically hunts down Clark’s mercenaries. In
Washington, Ryan gets wind of the whole nasty affair and tries desperately to
hack into Cutter’s computer to get badly needed evidence to prove his theory.
He is stifled by Cutter’s stealth in covering up the truth. Meanwhile, Catherine informs her husband the
body of her friend, Moira Wolfson was discovered in a remote cabin. Ryan pieces
together the clues and identifies Cortez as the assassin. As negotiations reach
a critical impasse, Greer quietly dies in hospital. Ever-loyal to his mentor
and the United States, Ryan elects to defy Cutter by confronting the President
with the truth. As yet, Ryan is quite unaware how far up the proverbial food
chain this insidious game of cloak and dagger goes. Returning to Columbia, Ryan
locates Clark. Unaware, Clark has been fed a lie by Cutter about Ryan, the two
men meet in a rather violent exchange that ends only after Ryan lays all his
cards on the table. Clark realizes it is Cutter, not Ryan, who is his enemy. As
all Clark’s men have been ambushed in the jungle by Escobedo’s men, with only
Ramirez and Chavez survived this bloody coup, and, currently, held by Cortez in
a dungeon, Ryan leads a daring assault on the compound, with Clark in tow.
Ryan unexpectedly turns up at
Escobedo’s walled-in compound and convinces him of Cortez’s complicity to
overthrow his regime. Escobedo confronts and accuses Cortez of treachery. Alas,
Escobedo has underestimated his adversary. In short order, he dies at Cortez’s
hand; Ryan, spared a similar fate as Chávez’s sniper fire is quick to alleviate
the threat. Ryan, Clark and Chávez kill
Cortez and stage a daring escape from the compound. Returning to America, much
wiser for his part in this shadowy affair, Ryan confronts President Bennett,
accusing him of complicity in a perilous cover-up. Ryan makes his intentions
known to Bennett. He will testify against the President in front of the
Congressional Oversight Committee, in spite of the irreparable damage it could
do to his own career. Bennett tempts Ryan with a plan for advancement within
the CIA. But Ryan, ever the Boy Scout, refuses to partake of the deceit any
longer. Marching confidently from the Oval Office, Ryan passes Cutter in the
hallway, refusing to speak to him. In the final moments, we see Ryan preparing
to make his formal testimony before Congress.
Worldwide, Clear and Present
Danger was a mega-hit for Paramount, grossing $215,887,717 and elevating
the popularity of Tom Clancy’s authorship to near mythical levels. Fans who had
been onboard with Clancy since his debut as an author were now overwhelmed by a
legion of new joiners, escalating his reputation as a bona fide rainmaker in
the picture biz. That it took nearly 8 years to bring Clancy’s sequel, The
Sum of All Fears (2002) to the screen was therefore something of a mystery
and time enough for the screen’s most ideal and genuine incarnation of Jack
Ryan - Harrison Ford - to have passed his box office prime. Viewed today, it
remains a high-octane thriller with a decidedly complex, yet never anything
less than riveting story to tell. After packaging all the Jack Ryan movies into
a single set 2 years ago, Paramount is finally coming around to offering stand-alone
movie releases in 4K. The results, while impressive, may not be to everyone’s
liking. There is, in fact, an expectation in 4K remastering, that it will
somehow breath ‘new life’ into vintage movies with HDR-10 and DolbyVision color
grading meant to make everything as vibrant as a Sony demo disc at your local
Best Buy. But Clear and Present Danger hails from an epoch when 35mm
Panavision, not digital, was the norm and the picture’s deliberately
desaturated color palette, lensed by cinematographer, Donald McAlpine takes its
cue from an stylized aesthetic more expressly focused on reality than brightly
lit and colorful backdrops. Overall, the appearance here lacks the pristine pop
of 4K. This is a grain-rich presentation. Close-ups achieve startling clarity,
every pore and hair follicle ‘clear and present’. HDR has also enriched contrast.
Black levels are exquisite. Paramount offers us the same 5.1 Dolby TrueHD audio
directly ported over from the previously released standard Blu-rays. A Blu-ray
is included and contains a brief featurette and theatrical trailer. The 4K has
no extras. If you already own the 5-disc Jack Ryan set, there is no reason to
double dip here. Judge and buy accordingly.
FILM RATING (out
of 5 – 5 being the best)
5+
VIDEO/AUDIO
4.5
EXTRAS
1
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