Review: "Clear and Present Danger" is Presently Really Good (Happy B'day, Harrison Ford)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 66 (of 2006) by Leroy Douresseaux

Clear and Present Danger (1994)
Running time: 141 minutes (2 hours, 21 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for some intense action/violence and language
DIRECTOR: Philip Noyce
WRITERS: Donald Stewart, Steven Zaillian, and John Milius
PRODUCERS: Mace Neufeld and Robert Rehme
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Donald McAlpine
EDITOR: Neil Travis
Academy Award nominee

DRAMA/ESPIONAGE/ACTION/ADVENTURE

Starring: Harrison Ford, Willem Dafoe, Anne Archer, Joaquim de Alemeida, Henry Czerny, Harris Yulin, Donald Moffat, Miguel Sandoval, Benjamin Bratt, Raymond Cruz, Thora Birch, Ann Magnuson, Greg Germann, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Belita Moreno, Ted Raimi, and James Earl Jones

Tom Clancy’s intrepid CIA agent, Jack Ryan, makes his third big screen appearance, with Harrison Ford reprising the role of Ryan, which he first played in 1992’s Patriot Games, after replacing Alec Baldwin, who played Ryan in The Hunt for Red October.

When his mentor, Admiral James Greer (James Earl Jones) becomes gravely ill, Jack Ryan (Ford) is assigned the position of acting CIA Deputy Director of Intelligence, but he meets some resistance in the form of two fellow CIA officers, Robert Ritter (Henry Czerny) and James Cutter (Harris Yulin). Ryan’s first assignment is to investigate the murder of a prominent U.S. businessman and his family. A friend of President Bennett (Donald Moffat), the murdered businessman apparently had secret ties to a Columbian drug lord, Ernesto Escobedo (Miguel Sandoval).

Unbeknownst to Ryan, Ritter and Cutter, with an unofficial, official go-ahead from President Bennett, have already dispatched a Columbian-based U.S. field operative named John Clark (Willem Dafoe) to lead a paramilitary force against the Columbian drug lords, Escobedo in particular. Ryan also finds that he must match wits with a Latin American version of himself, (Joaquim De Alemeida), who works for Escobedo. Caught in the middle of a brewing scandal and the crossfire of an illegal war, Ryan risks his career and life and jumps into the fray to uncover the thing that means the most to him – the truth.

Clear and Present Danger is the kind of espionage thriller that stands up to repeated viewings because it is also a very good drama, but the main reason the film remains popular is Harrison Ford. As he did so well from the early to the mid-90’s, Ford plays the self-righteous, heroic, sensitive macho man who fights for truth and justice (and sometimes the American way). He is a do-right man, but not just for the ladies. Here, he plays it to the hilt, grim-faced when confronted by lies and wrongful death, grim and solemn over a friend or colleague’s demise, and grimly but gamely going after the baddies.

Clear and Present Danger presents a cerebral Jack Ryan against a cast of Machiavellian bad guys, in particularly a trio of Americans willfully and recklessly waging a misguided and illegal war in the name of revenge and political expediency. Sound familiar? Although Clear and Present Danger seems at times to be a television mini-series (length and narrative structure), this timeless and timely tale, propped up by an amazing leading man (in the true sense of the term), maintains its edge and thrills.

8 of 10
A

NOTES:
1995 Academy Awards: 2 nominations: “Best Effects, Sound Effects Editing” (Bruce Stambler and John Leveque) and “Best Sound” (Donald O. Mitchell, Michael Herbick, Frank A. Montaño, and Art Rochester)

Monday, April 03, 2006

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Review: "The Quiet American" Waits Until the End to Get Loud (Happy B'day, Michael Caine)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 51 (of 2003) by Leroy Douresseaux

The Quiet American (2002)
Running time: 101 minutes (1 hour, 41 minutes)
MPAA – R for images of violence and some language
DIRECTOR: Phillip Noyce
WRITERS: Christopher Hampton and Robert Schenkkan (based upon a novel by Graham Greene)
PRODUCERS: Staffan Ahrenberg and William Horberg
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Christopher Doyle
EDITOR: John Scott
Academy Award nominee

DRAMA/MYSTERY with elements of a thriller

Starring: Michael Caine, Brendan Fraser, Do Thi Hai Yen, Tzi Ma, Pham Thi Mai, Robert Stanton, and Rade Serbedzija

Michael Caine earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his performance in Phillip Noyce’s film The Quiet American. It’s an understated, but rich performance by a veteran actor. However, you have to watch closely as you might miss some of the nuances. Caine plays by hook and by crook, taking advantage of visual and spoken opportunities to develop his character.

Thomas Fowler (Caine) is a British foreign correspondent in Vietnam, circa 1952, for the London Times. He’s also an opium addict with a girlfriend, Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen). He’d love to marry his Asian flower, but he can’t because his wife back in England is a Catholic who won’t grant him a divorce. Fowler is also resentful of American colonialist encroachment in Vietnam, a French colony. The French military is steadily losing a war against the communist rebels, and the Americans don’t want the country to “fall” to the communists. Fowler meets Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser, The Mummy), a quiet young American doctor who eventually vies with the older Englishman for the affection of Phuong and creates a rift between himself and Fowler of philosophical, cultural, political, and emotional ramifications.

Caine’s Fowler seems to exist in three phases. Early in the film, he’s quite uninteresting, just another Western dope addict with a Vietnamese sugar mama. Later, he’s a man with a dilemma who is afraid to lose the love of his life to Pyle, a man without his own marital entanglements. Finally, he’s a troubled man, angry at the growing American involvement in Vietnam, at the rising bloodshed and mounting casualties of a civil war, and afraid of what he might do to hold onto what he believes he has. The viewer literally has to watch Caine’s every facial tick and gesture, watch the actor’s eyes, and even scan the flush of his face. The audience also has to comb through the actor’s dialogue and listen to the subtle changes in tone during the voiceovers. Caine’s performance isn’t an obvious powerhouse; it’s straightforward, almost realistic. It’s almost as if he weren’t acting. There’s nothing phony about it, nor is their artifice. Caine’s Fowler is a mystery, and we can never figure him out even when we think we have him pinned. Fowler shifts with the wind and rolls with the punches, and the movie almost entirely belongs to Caine.

The Quiet American can at times seem almost too understated. The film lacks passion and rarely even smolders. It’s the most sedate thriller I’ve seen in years, which is a surprise coming from Noyce who is known for his thrillers and noisy action films like Dead Calm and Clear and Present Danger. Although he allows Caine room to roam, Noyce leaves the rest of his cast very little room in which to play, but they make the most of it. Fraser is an underrated actor who is quite capable of strong dramatic parts as seen in Gods and Monsters. Ms. Yen’s Phuong is too hemmed in, but Tzi Ma and Pham Thi Mai make the most of their small parts.

Caine’s performance makes The Quiet American worth a look, but the movie may be a bit slow for most viewers. Noyce and his screenwriters really underplay the film’s potential for dramatic impact. It’s a good film that has some very nice moments, but Noyce doesn’t really turn up the heat until the end when the implications of the story come to a head and leave us dizzy and shocked. Thankfully, we have a fine actor in Michael Caine to carry us along the slow journey.

6 of 10
B

NOTES:
2003 Academy Awards: 1 nomination: “Best Actor in a Leading Role” (Michael Caine)

2003 BAFTA Awards: 1 nomination: “Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role” (Michael Caine)

2003 Golden Globes: 1 nomination: “Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama” (Michael Caine)

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Review: Angelina Jolie's "Salt" is Good For You

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 11 (of 2011) by Leroy Douresseaux

Salt (2010)
Running time: 100 minutes (1 hour, 40 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action
DIRECTOR: Phillip Noyce
WRITER: Kurt Wimmer
PRODUCERS: Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Sunil Perkash
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Robert Elswit
EDITOR: Stuart Baird, John Gilroy, and Steven Kemper
COMPOSER: James Newton Howard
Academy Award nominee

ACTION/THRILLER

Starring: Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Daniel Olbrychski, August Diehl, Hunt Block, Andre Braugher, and Olek Krupa

Written by Kurt Wimmer, the writer/director of the film Equilibrium, Salt was originally about a male character named “Edwin A. Salt,” and Tom Cruise initially wanted to play the character. A little more than half a decade later, the character became a woman, now played by Angelina Jolie. The resultant film is, in the hands of the supremely skilled director, Philip Noyce, one of 2010’s best movies.

Salt focuses on Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie), a CIA agent recently released from a North Korean prison. Salt’s plans to celebrate her wedding anniversary with her husband, arachnologist Michael Krause (August Diehl), is interrupted by a sudden turn of events at the CIA. Vassily Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski), a Russian defector, arrives with shocking secrets. During Salt’s interrogation of him, Orlov reveals details about “Day X,” a Russian plot to destroy the United States by using highly-trained, English-speaking, Russian sleeper agents. And Orlov claims that Salt is one of those sleeper agents.

Suddenly, a rogue CIA agent, Salt is on the run, and she uses every tactic, accent, and disguise she knows to elude her pursuers, clear her name, and find her now-missing husband. Her CIA supervisor, Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber), believes that she may not be an enemy, but U.S. counter-intelligence agent, Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor), absolutely believes that Salt is an enemy. To save herself, however, Salt may end up doing the very things Orlov said she would.

Salt has two stellar supporting actors in the talented Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor, who both deliver their usual good work in this film. Outside of Asian cinema, no one is capable of delivering terrific work in both dramatic films and action movies the way Angelina Jolie does. Jolie makes Evelyn Salt the kind of secret agent/spy who is every bit the man James Bond or Jason Bourne is.

Salt is a magnificent CIA/spy film, however, because of the work of director Phillip Noyce (Dead Calm, Clear and Present Danger). The Australian director is a master of the thriller: action thriller, historical thriller, political thriller, social thriller, suspense thriller, and thriller thriller. From the beginning of Salt, it was as if Noyce threw a rope around me and dragged me along for a ride, and what a great ride Salt was. Its action is so visceral and its narrative so visually powerful that you might choose to ignore the set pieces that seem way, way farfetched. I can find very little about which to complain or criticize.

At times, Salt is like a comic book superhero story, and it occasionally seems as much a fantasy as it is a CIA thriller. Noyce took his more-than-capable dramatic action star, Angelina Jolie, and spun what will hopefully be the beginning of a beautiful new spy thriller franchise.

8 of 10
A

NOTE:
2011 Academy Awards: 1 nomination: “Best Achievement in Sound Mixing” (Jeffrey J. Haboush, William Sarokin, Scott Millan, and Greg P. Russell)

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