When an MP is murdered in The Presidio military facility in San Francisco, police officer Jay Austin (Mark Harmon), a former MP, finds himself in charge of the investigation.
This puts him at odds with Lt. Col. Alan Caldwell (Sean Connery), his former boss.
When evidence points towards members of the top brass, will the pair be able to put aside their differences to solve the case?
Movies are hard to make. They are made up of millions of decisions made by groups of filmmakers trying to create a singular vision. I think that is why I keep going back to the work of Peter Hyams.
Every time I go in hoping for the best, and end up coming away with a consistent takeaway: Every Hyams movie has some great elements, but there is always something holding them back.
That being said, he can still put together a fun movie: Outland is terrific, and I enjoy his JCVD collaborations. I consider myself a Hyams apologist, but even when his pictures do not work, I find them interesting.
Such is the case with The Presidio.
The premise is vaguely intriguing - a murder investigation on a military base sees jursidictional overlap between the military and the civilian police. The cop running the investigation is a former MP and his partner is his former chief as an MP.
There are the bones for a solid thriller there, with the unique element of the MPs.
But after the initial set up, it feels like that context becomes less important, and the movie begins to feel more generic. There is a trail of clues, but the investigation never really comes into focus. And the mystery is ultimately not that interesting.
I find a lot of genre movies falter with this - see The Batman - but this is a feature for The Presidio.
Because the movie also wants to be a relationship drama between the two warring cops. Not to sound repetitive but with this aspect of the story, the film feels underwritten.
Part of the reason may be miscasting: The teaming of Sean Connery with Mark Harmon never works.
Connery is solid - it is a good role for him, as a stoic man who finally breaks down to finally expose his emotions. It is the one real arc in the movie that is purely built through his performance.
Part of the performance’s power comes from it being Connery in the role. His persona is of emotional containment. His Bond was always cool under pressure, and a similar sense of emotional reticence runs through his work. It makes the moments when he does break down more powerful - he brings that history from previous roles.
I could not get a fix on Mark Harmon. He has physical prowess during the action scenes but even then he never holds the screen. I was never fascinated by him, and it never felt like there was a character there, with a sense of history and inner life.
To be frank, I do not think he has the charisma to match Connery, but I am also not willing to say that he was well-placed in this movie. According to trivia, Don Johnson was supposed to be the lead but dropped out last minute so Harmon was parachuted onto the production.
Maybe if he had been involved earlier, and had time, his performance would be more specific, but as is, his portrayal of Jay Austin is a little flat.
It does not help that The Presidio also wants to be a love story between Jay and Alan’s daughter Donna (Meg Ryan). This subplot feels completely unnecessary - it is important in as far as it helps to define Connery, but that is about it.
The romance is established so quickly I thought the characters knew each other already. If Harmon and Ryan had dynamite chemistry, it might have worked but the way their relationship builds is so generic it felt like the movie had been made from an early treatment rather than a fleshed-out script.
I was expecting her to become a pawn in the mystery. I had read Roger Ebert’s review and he thought the same thing, but the movie had lulled me into the same line of thinking that I still thought she might end up in danger.
As far as action, the movie features two chases and a gun fight in a factory. None of them are particularly interesting, and they are not staged or put together in a way that conveys energy or danger.
Not as fun as his first collaboration with Connery, The Presidio is one of the blander efforts from Peter Hyams.
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