It’s hard to think of a more iconic actor than Harrison Ford. And it’s equally hard to think of a less interesting character than Jack Ryan, the protagonist of countless espionage thrillers. And yet, America loves Harrison Ford in this role. “How dare YOU, sir?” he barks angrily at the president, who is corrupt and venal. But he still calls him “sir”, because he respects the office. Yeah, that’s…
Show notes
It’s hard to think of a more iconic actor than Harrison Ford. And it’s equally hard to think of a less interesting character than Jack Ryan, the protagonist of countless espionage thrillers. And yet, America loves Harrison Ford in this role. “How dare YOU, sir?” he barks angrily at the president, who is corrupt and venal. But he still calls him “sir”, because he respects the office. Yeah, that’s what this character is like. The plot of ‘Clear & Present Danger’ is convoluted and not entirely plausible, but the movie is well-made. At any given moment, you know what Jack Ryan is up to, what clandestine information he’s working to uncover and who’s trying to blow him up. Your efforts as a viewer here are aided by the movie’s relentless binary of good and evil. The bad guys are always bad, and can be counted on to do bad things, and the good guys are always good and noble-hearted. One wonders if there are actually this many high-ranking CIA officers who are quite so devoted to honestly following the rules.
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. Being The Fugitive is a tough business. He spends most of the movie running around Chicago being resourceful - forging documents, stealing other documents, and looking…
3 yrs ago · 31:36
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 ‘Air Force One’, a 1997 action thriller, a band of evil Russian separatists takes over the president’s very special airplane with…
3 yrs ago · 33:26
Though we know him more for action and adventure roles, Harrison Ford has been known to try his hand at a romantic comedy or two. Turns out that craggy handsomeness and twinkle-eyed charm are just as useful for wooing the ladies as it is for fending off space aliens. In ‘Working Girl', Melanie Griffith plays a gritty outer-borough striver who decides to perpetrate identity fraud to get ahead in…
3 yrs ago · 42:54
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. In ‘Witness’, the first of Harrison Ford’s two mid-80s outings with director Peter Weir, our hero plays a gritty Philadelphia detective who has to hole up at a remote farmstead in Amish country and spend most of the movie…
3 yrs ago · 37:32
