After his friend is murdered by the cartels, the President gives tacit support for a covert scheme to destroy the cartel’s operations. This gives Felix Cortez an opportunity to topple the cartel leader, exacerbating the conflict and the body count.
Installed as deputy director of intelligence at the CIA, Jack Ryan is caught in the middle.
Narratively more dense and less focused on Ryan than the previous movie but weirdly just as engrossing. The suspense and action elements feel more unique than the previous movie.
John Milius had been hired to draft a film version after Red October, but the studio decided to do Patriot Games instead.
Milius’s script was re-written by Donald E. Stewart to increase Jack Ryan’s role. His draft was criticised by Clancy so the film was re-written by Steve Zallian. Parts of the filmed footage were destroyed in an earthquake, and the film underwent reshoots after test screenings.
Following their success with Patriot Games, Director Philip Noyce and cinematographer Donald MacAlpine returned, along with composer James Horner.
According to Wikipedia, some parts of the soundtrack are based on the music from James Horner's soundtrack for Gorky Park, but played with different instruments. I also heard the main theme to Commando during the ambush scene.
The film was a big hit, grossing 216 million worldwide out-grossing Patriot Games and Red October.
I like the judicious use of handheld cameras throughout the movie.
I often think of the nineties Ryan movies as holding the space that the Bourne movies would later occupy. Technically, they are very different, but the filmmakers seem to recognise the power of vetting kinds of techniques.
The use of moving or handheld camera is not as hectic as Bourne. Often they are not moving shots but they are meant to convey the sense of immersion (the first scene on the Coast Guard boat; in the cars during the convoy). One of the most effective of these shots is a low angle handheld shot during the jungle ambush where the soldiers are pinned down in the canyon.
The plot is really complicated - you have three sets of antagonists: the president’s inner circle; the drug lord; and the drug lord’s ambitious intelligence man.
There is a running theme of doubling through the movie - we have two villains, two schemes and Jack Ryan himself faces his mirror image in Felix Cortez.
Joquiam de Almedia is good as the villain but my personal favourite is Henry Czerny as deputy director Ritter - he is so slimy and smug. He comes off like a facsimile of a real-life war hawk like Elliott Abrams.
He was so good he got to play a slightly more ambiguous intel man in the first Mission: Impossible movie. For a moment in the mid-nineties, he cornered the market as a smug bureaucrat.
I am torn on Donald Moffat as the President.
I like how forced his jocularity is - he reads like you garden variety pol - completely beholden and enabled by his inner circle. I like the fact that he is not an obvious analogue and the filmmakers did not do a straight rip of Nixon.
With hindsight, the film is pretty naive in certain aspects of its politics, but the choice of a affable, elder guy as the president shows a certain level of awareness.
He is not overtly devious. It is clear he has convinced himself that he is doing the right thing. He is also keeping himself just outside the loop, and has no moral centre. Frankly, that is a more believable figure to be afraid of. It is almost highlighting the deficiencies of a system where so much power is vested in one man.
The action highlight is the ambush on the convoy - it was written by John Milius and the filmmakers do a fantastic job establishing the geography of the scene.
Apparently it is still used as an exemplar by anti-terrorist units.
It is so good it is to buy into the shoved-in friendship stuff with Ryan’s friend Dan.
There is some really effective cinematic tension elsewhere in the movie - the scene where Ryan is trying to print a document before Ritter deletes it is nail-biting.
The scene intercutting between Jim Greer’s (James Earl Jones) funeral and the ambush on the marines is really affecting - it is a great way of highlighting the hypocrisy of the president’s speech while showing the collateral damage of their policies - there’s also the scene of the marines’ blowing up the cartel leaders and then seeing kids playing at the estate.
I first watched this pre-9/11 and it hits so different now - with the endless wars and drone strikes, it feels prescient and naive of the danger of American power.
The book apparently deals with how the War on Drugs turned into a self-sustaining cycle, and I get that is the intention here but it is a tad too plot-driven for that theme to come out.
Taking in the context of the film’s making, the film feels like a product of Post-Vietnam fears of mission creep and government deceit.
It also feels like an analogue of the Iran-Contra scandal - for newcomers, this was a complicated scheme involving selling weapons to Iran and passing the proceeds to the anti-government forces in Nicaragua.
Ronald Reagan was never charged but there are only two possibilities - he knew all about it or he was so incompetent he could not keep his people on a leash.
In 1992, several members of Reagan and Bush’s administrations faced going to court to testify or were already heading for prison - the scandal was about to break even bigger but then-Attorney General Bill Barr convinced president Bush to pardon them before he left office.
The movie does not really resolve with a big emotional high - I found myself getting a rush as the threads were tied off but no exhilaration when the soldiers were rescued.
The movie juggles its various plots effectively - I could follow what was going on - but it lacks the intimacy of its predecessor. I prefer this movie but I can understand why people might find Patriot Games more dramatically successful.
While the action is not that emotionally charged, Ryan’s final confrontation with the president feels more involving and effective. Part of it is the intimacy of the scene, but most of the credit has to go to Ford. It is a testament to his weight and presence as an actor and a movie star that this scene does not come across as silly.
Final thoughts?
Most people wish Harrison Ford did more Indiana Jones adventures. I really wish he made a couple more Jack Ryan movies.
Clear and Present Danger might be more plot-driven, but I love the ambition of it, and the set pieces are more emotionally involving than Patriot Games.
It at least deserves kudos for featuring a suspense scene involving two guys at computers that is actually tense!
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