Clear and Present Danger (1994)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1994
	Director: Phillip Noyce (The Saint)
	Actors: Harrison Ford (Indiana Jones 1-4), Willem Dafoe (Spider-man, Platoon), Anne Archer, James Earl Jones (Conan the Barbarian)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 02.02.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: When his boss (Jones) gets sick, Jack Ryan (Ford) is appointed CIA deputy director of Intelligence and entrusted with the task of discovering the connection between the murder of a friend of the President and Colombian drug cartels.
Review: I have now fresh in memory the five cinema adaptations of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan novels, so that I can sort them as follows: 1) The Hunt for Red October (1990): not yet reviewed on this blog but deserves 9/10 2) The Sum of All Fears (2002): 8/10 3) Clear and Present Danger (1994): 7/10 4) Patriot Games (1992): 6/10 5) Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014): 4/10 Although I haven't seen The Hunt for Red October in three years at least, I know that it is the best of all five. Clear and Present Danger is not bad at all, shot back-to-back with Patriot Games by the same director, with the same cast and also crew I guess. I liked the story better than the one of Patriot Games, and enjoyed a lot the pristine image quality brought by the Blu-ray HD transfer. Jack Ryan is not anymore an anonymous CIA analyst involved in world-class (nuclear) threats, but a high-ranking bureaucrat involved in more local American matters, although they do involve the President of the USA. I liked the low-key tone of the movie, uncharacteristic of the 90's, which takes time to introduce its characters and never shows action when not necessary. Actually action scenes are very few and culminate with the motorcade attack at mid-length of the movie. The actors are convincing (Jones is great, Dafoe not less, but Anne Archer looks bored reprising her role of Jack's wife), the images look good and the suspense palpable. A nice spy-thriller.
Rating: 7 /10