Ten Movies

Though some of his other roles are more iconic, ‘Blade Runner’ is perhaps Harrison Ford’s most celebrated movie, at least in the world of genre films. Which, of course, made his career and has since gone on to entirely swallow contemporary cinema.

This is an odd duck in the Harrison Ford canon. Instead of his usual decent everyman hero, here he plays a deranged libertarian inventor who becomes increasingly unmoored from reality – endangered a young River Phoenix and the rest of his hapless family in the process.

Harrison Ford had it all – a beautiful wife, a flourishing medical career and a big chunky beard. But then a sinister one-armed man murdered his wife and the bumbling cop blamed him and he had no choice but to become The Fugitive.

A glossy, modern Hollywood western movie made with extreme attention to detail and featuring beloved A-List stars? And also aliens show up? The premise is solid gold – but the execution, sadly, left much to be desired.

Exciting? Certainly. Preposterous? Absolutely. But will you enjoy Harrison Ford as the president of the United States, personally karate-fighting and machine-gunning an array of sneering terrorists who have seized his airplane? If you are a good American, you will.

In ‘Working Girl’, Melanie Griffith plays a gritty outer-borough striver who decides to perpetrate identity fraud to get ahead in the business world, which she has to do because Sigourney Weaver is a mean boss. Amid these shenanigans, she meets Harrison Ford.

If there’s a more iconic Harrison Ford role than Indiana Jones, its Han Solo. The vest! The blaster! The roguish ne’er-do-well grin! The giant dog sidekick! He is the dashing space pirate by which all future dashing space pirates will be measured – and found wanting.

If you’re keen on unspoken but palpable yearning, ‘Witness’ will be right up your alley. If, on the other hand, you enjoy things happening, this may not be the movie for you.