Review of Clear And Present Danger

Introduction

Anybody who has seen the first two Jack Ryan films will admit that no matter how enjoyable they are, they revolve around a highly unlikely plot. Clear and Present Danger has a much more real-life story revolving around Columbian drug cartels, politics and covert CIA operations in Central America. This results in a film that is slower than Patriot Games but ultimately better.

Video

The DVD is a non-anamorphic transfer at 2.35:1. The running time of 141 minutes is broken down into 23 chapters, breaking the film down into manageable chunks for viewing specific sequences. Visual quality is a mixed bag – the image is stable but being non-anamorphic, suffers from lack of resolution in some scenes. In particular the long-range shots of Columbia are grainy and slightly out of focus, and the panning shots of the White House suffer from ghosting on the walls and gateposts and slight juddering. However on the whole the picture quality is acceptable but I would describe it as average rather than exceptional.

Other than explosions, there is little in the way of special effects in the film, however in general they are convincing and realistic, the only let down is some dubious rear-projection when Ryan is airlifted from the top of the coffee plant at the end of the movie.

Having also seen an American Laserdisc version of this film, I am of the opinion that both are the same and no effort has been made to clean up the image for DVD.

Audio

Clear and Present Danger is rare among action films in having virtually no music – so although the film features a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, sound focuses on dialog with little happening on the rear channels. However, during the action scenes all channels and subwoofer fire into action.

The opening sequence of a ship crashing into the waves gives your subwoofer an early workout and has wind swirling around the room. Other scenes of note include the helicopters flying into Columbia in Chapter 7 with some nice front-rear effects using both rear channels, the main action sequence of the film – the ambush in Chapter 11 which has plenty of explosions and gunfire all round the room, and the bombing of the drug barons in Chapter 14 which starts with several flyovers by a missile culminating in a very large explosion!

Overall the soundtrack gives clear dialog with plenty of noise and effects when necessary.

Features

As with the two previous films having a “Special Features” section on the back of the box is a bit of a cheek. All that is on offer is the Theatrical Trailer and Scene Selection – a very poor show considering that this was a major film with a strong cast.

The DVD comes in an Amaray case and only has a single-page leaflet listing scenes inside.

Conclusion

Anybody who enjoyed either of the first two films will also like Clear and Present Danger. Harrison Ford gives a typically strong performance and is backed up by a good cast.

Given the average non-anamorphic picture and lack of any extra material on the disc, this DVD does not give much value for money, but given it’s limited availability on video in recent years, a special edition may never appear - leaving those who want the Jack Ryan trilogy on DVD to tolerate the shortcomings.