Unclear and Present Danger - Clear and Present Danger

Episode Date: November 26, 2021

In this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John discuss the show’s namesake, “Clear and Present Danger,” the third and final “Jack Ryan” movie of the 1990s, whose politics are one part arch-cynicism about American foreign policy and one part naive liberal optimism about the integrity of the national security bureaucracy. Other topics include the film’s connection to the Iran-Contra scandal, the way that it touches on American memory of the Vietnam War, the fantasy of unlimited American power that animates this and other movies in the Tom Clancy oeuvre and, of course, Harrison Ford.Contact us!Follow us on Twitter!John GanzJamelle BouieLinks from the episode!New York Times frontpage for August 3, 1994The Tom Clancy Companion1994 Entertainment Weekly feature on “Clear and Present Danger”

Some say the greatest threat to America. These drug cartels represent a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States. Comes from other nations. Some say the greatest threat to America. The course of action I'd suggest. It's a course of action I can't suggest. Comes from within. Paramount Pictures presents.

This summer's most electrifying motion picture, clear and present danger. Welcome to Episode 3 of Unclear and Present Danger, a podcast about the political and military thrillers of the 1990s and what they say about the politics of that decade. I'm Jamel Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times Opinion Section. I'm John Gans. I'm a columnist for Gawker, and I'm also working on a book about American politics in the early 90s. Today, obviously, we are talking about our namesake, the movie Clear and Present Danger from 1990. directed by Philip Noyce, who directed Patriot Games, the previous movie in the Jack Ryan franchise, and who will go on to direct other movies that we will cover on this podcast. In the last episode, I said I wasn't too familiar with Philip Noyes' career,

but as I looked into it ahead of this episode, I realized that I've actually seen a bunch of his movies, and it's very much a 90s thriller director. So we'll dive into more of this stuff later. But before we get to the conversation about noise or about this movie, let's talk about what happened on the day this movie was released. This movie came out on August 3rd, 1994. We both have a copy of the New York Times from that day in the headlines, I think are actually kind of relevant to the movie. John, how about you take it? You take the headlines.

Um, yeah. I mean, so some interesting stuff going on. There's, um, an article about how Mandela South Africa, which I, I believe that, um, it was, this was shortly after the first free multiracial elections in South Africa, was, is having trouble, um, attracting foreign investors. There's an exchange between, uh, treasury, deputy treasury secretary, secretary Robert Altman and Alphons de Motto where Altman was accused of lying about Whitewater. If anybody remembers Whitewater, it was the scandal that the Clintons had something kind of improper, I think, real estate deals with their law firm. More seriously, there's an article about Rwanda and how there were plans.

plans now to it's the the headline reads Rwanda plans to try thousands for massacres new leader says this was not long after the Rwanda genocide after the mostly Hutu government had been overthrown that oversaw the genocide and replaced with paul kagame's government and they were I think planning to to do trials for for the war crimes there's a piece about the Mitchell plan Senator George Mitchell's plan for health care, which would cover 95% of the public by the year 2000, but without making employers pay. And we all know that that came true. Yes. We all thank the Mitchell plan for saving the American health care system. Yes. And then there is another article about a drug company merger, There was an article about the U.S. FDA going at trying to finally regulate nicotine in cigarettes.

They're arrested, 22 are arrested in thefts of Kennedy Airport cargo. I wonder if this was the same heist that's depicted. Yes, it is. It's the same heist that's depicted in Goodfellas, which was a famous robbery by the mafia at the Kennedy Airport, the Luft This is a Lepanza heist. This is a Lepanza. Wait. Yeah.

No, this isn't, this is different. This is a different one. They reference a Lopanza. Oh, they reference. Okay, it's not, it's not that. Okay. But they got Dom Parenthold Champagne, Reebok sneakers, and Kodak, a $1 million shipment of Kodak film.

Okay, it's a different heist, but it's another big. I mean, I could personally use a bunch of Kodak film and some Reebok sneakers. Yeah. How much do you think $1 million of Kodak? Probably, these days, it's. It's not that much. I don't know. I mean, it's still good about it.

It's a lot of film. So, you know, I said that the headlines are relevant to the movie, just because this headline about Altman lying or being accused of lying to Congress, and then this headline about regulating nicotine just relates to the plot of the movie, which involves congressional hearings and lying to Congress and drug regulation. and so on and so forth. But before we move on to discussing, to our discussion of this movie, just a quick, a few quick notes on the film.

Again, directed by Philip Noyes, screenplay. First Credit Goose to John Millius, who worked on Hunt for Red October, directed a bunch of movies you're familiar with Conan the Barbarian, Red Dawn, so on, so forth, obviously based off of the novel, Clear and Present Danger by Tom Clancy. And starring a bunch of people from Patriot games, Harrison Ford, obviously, Anne Archer, as his wife, James Earl Jones, as director of the CIA. But then some newcomers, Willem Defoe, who is always, who is my favorite part of this movie by far.

Joachim de Alameda, who plays someone described as a Latin Jack Ryan. And then Miguel Sandoval, who plays the Pablo Escobar stand in. And the movie was a huge success. It grossed over $200 million at the box office on a budget of $62 million. So this has been sort of Marvel Cinematic Universe numbers except for an intelligent adult thriller. You know, one can dream for that that happen again. Yeah, I think it beat out Forrest Gump, which was out around, it replaced it or as the number one movie in America at the time. People loved it.

strangely enough critics not so much uh there are some very good reviews but um i've been going through the criticism and a lot of people thought that the plot was too complicated and that uh the characters were unsatisfying and there was a there's some people said the movie was too cynical or liked it because it was cynical and some people said it was too naive about the virtue of its characters so there was a there was a mixed political opinion in time I think that actually provides a good place for us to go. Where do you, I mean, where do you stand on that question? I think the movie has strong elements of both of being very cynical,

but also kind of naive in a almost endearing way about the U.S. government. But where do you land on that? That's a really good question. So I think like there's a, you know, my feeling about this movie, that there's really something for everybody in it in that it's it does it's served it does service to a lot of different ideological views of the American government and US foreign policy and sort of has ways of interpreting you know ways that support a lot of different politics um from conservative to you know actually

quite left-wing criticisms of US foreign policy I don't know I I think like you know when I when I watch this movie as a a kid and I watched it many many times it did form it was part of my formation as a young lefty and being like oh the America's always fighting you know these these evil secret covert wars and you know that so there was that but then there's also you know it's it's more on the on the text on the surface it's lionizing of you know national security bureaucrats who are honest and good as opposed to the evil ones And there is also a bit of purient fascination, one might say, with the U.S. war machine and its capacity to, you know, kill people at great distance, you know, from precision airstrikes to commandos and stuff like that.

And probably like this is sort of a taste of, I mean, this stuff was very present in the Reagan 80s, but, but, you know, a taste of, you know, a taste of sort of. of the aesthetics of American violence that, you know, got bigger with the War on Terror, like, namely with, you know, things like drone strikes and U.S. Commando Raids and things like that. So I think there's a lot of, I mean, I don't know how intentional is, but the movie is itself a little bit, not, I think it's, I mean, look, the poster of the movie has Harrison Ford literally draped in an American flag. So the, the, I think, I think that the. the on the on the surface of the text you know it's very clear this movie is is is a patriotic movie that and even when it has critical parts of you know reading of of american policy or stuff like that but on the other hand you know I think you can watch this movie as a leftist and be like yeah that's what the government does they're doing stuff like that all the time and you can watch this movie as a conservative and say this stuff rocks I love this kind of thing and you can watch the movie as a liberal and be like

There are decent people in the government who I trust to, you know, make sure that the U.S. government doesn't do too many bad things. Right. What do you think? Real quick, just for listeners who haven't seen the movie, though, of course, if you have not seen the movie, I strongly recommend you pause this podcast, you go check it out. It's available, I want to say, on Amazon streaming,

but it's a very easy movie to find. It's on Netflix right now. It's on Netflix right now. It's a very easy movie to find on streaming. I happen to own a 4K Blurray of it because I'm a maniac and I spend too much money on these things. But it's well worth your time. It's actually a very compelling movie. It moves very quickly.

But just not a plot summary, but just a real quick synopsis. This movie deals with the fallout from a drug cartel murdering an American businessman and his family. That business being a friend of the president of the president of the United States. States who authorizes a covert war against the Cali cartel that ends up roping in Jack Ryan as he begins to figure out first who this businessman was and then what his connections were and how this goes how there's corruption going up to the very top of the American government and so it's more or less that sets the stage for everything it happens in in the film and as you've alluded to John

once you get past sort of the bureaucratic stuff and there's a lot of bureaucratic stuff in this movie and I think actually those are my favorite parts of the movie me too the movie also spends a lot of time far more than the previous Jack Ryan movies do with the American well I guess Hunter for October

take place in the submarine but with sort of the armed forces engaged in operations against an enemy And so you have commandos, you know, special forces. There is a scene of an aerial bombing that is very evocative of the war on terror, of footage from drone strikes. At the time, I think it would have been most familiar to viewers as, you know, evocative of footage from the First of Rock War, the Gulf War. You know, there's, you know, lots of famous footage of guided missiles hitting their targets from, you know, you can see from the satellite and so there's a whole sequence with that and in that attack

kids are killed so there's this there's that whole sequence is very war on terror just in terms of you know it's a strike against a compound there's kids are among the casualties the policy makers that national security folks are kind of a little dismayed by what they did or at least one of them is the other is sort of like yeah who gives a fuck that's that guy is played by henry Serzy, I think it's Serzi. Yeah, he's great. His name, Zerney, Henry Zerney,

as the character, Bob Ritter, and he is great. You've seen him in Mission Impossible, the first movie, and he kind of, it was a great, you know, supporting actor of the 90s,

usually played a scumbag. Has that look about him. He plays a very archetypal, evil Reaganite National Security Burecrat. in this movie. Right. It has a great job.

But the movie, the movie is, does spend a lot of time with, with the armed forces. And for me, it is, the time spent with the armed forces

and sort of the national security state and the time spent with Ryan are kind of, are the two ideological poles of the film, right? Sort of the, the, um,

the depictions of, of commando strikes and attacks against the cartel is sort of look this is the united states waging a covert war the audience knows it's an illegal war that's made very clear at the beginning that the president has authorized something and isn't isn't isn't isn't as his hands are free of what it may particularly be but sort of giving it to his national security team to say you handle it you take care of it um and you see them take care of it through these you know more less illegal attacks in the sovereign nation to take up the cartels and then on the ryan end uh all the scenes and sequences of jack ryan and his investigation more or less are of these competent

you know patriotic bureaucrats um some of them are black i'm always interested in sort of like the depiction of kind of like the multiracial security state yes me too and uh and and and And they are doing sort of the hard work of investigating, the honest work of investigating the movie seems to say, versus the political machinations of these national security appointees. And it's sort of these two things collide when Ryan figures out that one of the cartel members is in communication with, working with a member of the president's team, who ends up, you know, betraying the military or the commandos in South America,

and that kind of leads you to your final set piece, your final act of the film. This is where Willem DeFoe's character comes, and he plays a character called John Clark, who is a covert ops guy, and he is sort of the go-between between the people in Washington and the people on the ground. But to me, you know, to me, the movie is, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. To me, the movie is sort of this weird kind of processing of a Ron Contra almost 10 years after the fact. I guess Iran Contra, the scandal really breaks in 1986. It's not until, what, 91 that George H.W. Bush pardons a bunch of the

participants. He's with guidance from his attorney general, who is Bill Barr. So Bill Barr, you know, his life-falling mission to keep Republican president safe from any political accountability for their actions shows up here. But the movie, Clear and Present Danger, really does seem to give us like a fictional Iran-Contra, at least the contrar part of Iran-Contra, with a president who is very much aware of what he's doing. So it's interesting that this Tom Clancy movie takes, I'd say this very dim view of the idea that, say, Reagan wasn't aware of what was happening in his name.

The movie is saying the president is totally aware, and it's part of sort of these political games, this pretense that he's not. Right. Yeah, I think that, okay, so, yeah, the books, the book itself also is an obvious allusion to Iran-Contra, in the case of where it shows an illegal, you know, national security operation that comes through the White House, and it shows, you know, in pretty granular detail for a thriller, you know, a Hollywood thriller, like the bureaucratic process of starting, you know, a war where the president gives us

authorization and the CIA clandestine ops director wants a you know a copy of it to you know function it as as cover or as a get out of jail free card if he gets caught so you know it does take a lot of interest in that and I think it's it is true that it's kind of critical about the whole idea that Reagan didn't know what was going on and the present character in the movie is absolutely a sort of this dopey Republican who's obviously supposed to be a little bit of Reagan and a little bit of Bush and who is sort of reacting to and getting you know in the in the book the covert operation is going on before this guy's family gets killed the president's family gets killed presence friend's family gets killed so the key the covert war

predates it so revenge is not the the motive in the book so much but in the movie they make it so okay the republican president is just doing things out of his kind of emotional reactions to things and um and that's leading to all these you know problems and there's also a political motive because he wants to you know do something against the cartels uh because he's you know he wants to be re-elected, which has gone into much more in the book about how, you know, there's an ongoing presidential race. Where was I going with this? So I think that, yeah, the president is depicted as being, you know, culpable and maybe incompetent

in a way, in a way that would obviously resonate with the way that liberals started to think about Reagan, but, you know, he knew full well what was going on. I mean, the thing about, you know, Reagan and Iran Contra is that Reagan had a real, because of his background in the movies, these kinds of adventurous intrigues and commandos and sort of like that, he really loved that kind of thing. And he pursued it out of, you know, almost this anesthetic reasons and also just because, you know, he would feel like, you know, a miracle was right and powerful and should exercise that power. So that kind of cult of covert ops really grew up in the Reagan years, and this movie definitely has a bit of a bit of a critical view of it. There's also, you know,

there's also an element that goes back to, to Vietnam, actually, I found in the movie, I think, in the movie like the abandonment of the U.S. troops by the national security bureaucrats which and they subsequently get captured by the villains

and are like forgotten about and deliberately you know covered up by the by the evil bureaucrats is just you know basically exactly analogous to the

P-O-W-M-I-A myth conspiracy theory that you know there are virtuous American troops and they were left behind by American American you know national security bureaucrats who had their own evil political agendas

and that's just like recapitulating the film so I think yeah there's like there's you're absolutely right that this is processing your own contra and that scandal but there's another part of it and the movie alludes to Vietnam a few times because when Jack Ryan is getting grilled by the senator she she brings up vietnam and he promises because he doesn't know

what's going on he's been kept in the dark by the he's the he becomes the deputy director of intelligence the deputy director of operations who does the clandestine stuff is this evil henry sereney character and he does he's kept in the dark so he doesn't know and he promises the senator who brings up vietnam that there are no advisors there are no troops um which turns out not to true. So I think in a way, yeah, there's absolutely Iran-Contra, but the movie really is also still processing the traumas and issues of Vietnam as well. I mean, it's jungle environment and, you know, it's allusions to the POWMIA stuff and it's it's allusions to illegal and secret wars, which is a huge part of our involvement in Vietnam and Indochina in general is definitely present here.

So, yeah. No, so there's two things here. The first is that I think you touched on one of the persistent themes of these Clancy movies, and I'll be curious to see if they show up in kind of other films in this genre, which is just the basic, you know, untrustworthiness of politicians and political appointees, that no one political, no one explicitly political in this film has any kind of good motive. and the people whom the film presents to you as, if not pure motive, then at least decent men are the non-political bureaucrats like Ryan,

are the men of the military like Willam Defoe's character or any of the commandos. You know, James Gerald Jones, he's practically cast for this sort of gravitas and ability to command respect. But likewise, he is presented as kind of untainted by Washington politics, by the petty concerns of politicians. I think you're right as well about the way this movie is processing Vietnam. And the 90s were, you know, part of this longer moment of the country processing Vietnam with a little more distance from the war itself, right? After the big victory of the Gulf War, which is understood in the moment to be this kind of where we're, you know, we've talked about this before for back baby american military might is back um uh we weren't humiliated like we were in in vietnam um there is a bit more i think openness in media about

thinking through um the war that war and its effects on the soldiers the american soldiers who fought at the very least and so john mccain i believe goes back to vietnam in the 90s that's when yeah and that's when we recognize we fully recognize vietnam and it yeah right right um so you have you our full recognition of vietnam john mcaine returns uh we were talking about force gump for scump is a movie where vietnam plays a major part in the story and i think you could also kind of fold that in to um the 90s kind of reconciling the country reconciling ourselves with vietnam i always find it interesting to put movies about american the use of military force American military within the context of the mid-90s kind of

greatest generation thing I have no I have no better noun for but should have you know if same private Ryan at the end of the decade you have exactly what you're talking about you have kind of the recognition that the generation that fought World War II is coming to an end and so there's a lot more memorialization going on around there's also just a 50th anniversary of the war

in 95 so there's a lot of that happened And even if this movie doesn't directly touch on that stuff, I like to, it's in the atmosphere. I think it's worth noting that it's, it's in the atmosphere. I think, you know, along with, you know, there's this, there's this division between, as you pointed out, like the evil bureaucrats and the good professionals of Greer and Ryan. And it's interesting that, you know, this breaks, this kind of aligns with a certain, it's not a, it's not exactly mythology. but it's maybe over-emphasized that there's a division in the CIA itself between the clandestine service operations guys who go around blowing things up

and assassinating people and the intelligence wing of the CIA. And, you know, often there's a political dimension to this where the CIA's intelligence gathering wing is traditionally a little bit more liberal, the clandestine service is a little bit more conservative this movie well john clark will and defoe's character as part of the clandescent service and it presents him in a positive light but it presents the head of the clandestine service as a real son of a bitch and the head of intelligence as a very upright and honorable guy or the two people who end up taking that role in the movie so it's kind of recreating that but you know there's a connection to vietnam there too because you know the story there goes and you know this

some version of this repeated with the iraq war is that the intelligence wins of the CIA was honestly reporting what was going on but you know the political needs of Washington and the Pentagon kept on overriding their negative

reports so there's a little bit of like look there's the good wing the good guys in the CIA are the intelligence guys and the bad guys in the CIA are the clandestine service guys thing being recapitulated by this movie and

you know that obviously is a story that liberals like because liberals the intelligence guys at the CIA tend to be liberals or more liberal. The problem with that story is that it's not this ideal that the movie stipulates about kind of like apolitical, totally professional people

in the CIA is just not true. Even the relatively liberal products of the intelligence side, who have been CIA directors have, you know, use the CIA as part of the president's political agenda. And that's the way it works. And they've falsified, downplayed, exaggerated intelligence in order to fit in with whatever the political agenda of the White House is. So, you know, I think that this, it would be nice to imagine that, you know, there are, or there are these, these members of the of the of these of these great security bureaucracies who are utterly

professional and unsweighable by political you know considerations and that's i just think not true and a myth probably better dispensed with um although one that you know obviously has its attractions uh but i mean it's you know look i mean look at look at greer the admiral greer who is dying of cancer in the movie and it adds considerable pathos to it, who is, as you pointed out, clearly meant to read as Colin Powell, classically, you know, one of the great professional truth tellers of, you know, American national security apparatus and we all know how he got swept up or was complicit in, you know, the political agenda of the Bush and So I think that this this kind of idea that, you know, there are there are people who are not subject to political pressures and can see through it and we'll do the right thing is a little difficult to believe after the war on terror, you know, and probably should have been difficult to believe after the after Vietnam and Iran contra and stuff like that. But the movie definitely seems to think it's still there.

John, you found further record before we started recording, you found some excerpts from this Tom Clancy. reader that was published in 92, the Tom Clancy companion that deals with, I suppose just like looks at the books published up till then and then has interviews and lots of photographs and articles and such about Clancy. And the thing, the excerpt in particular that I thought was really interesting that I thought made an interesting point was that, was that in the The novel, and I think this is the case in the movie, in the novel and in the movie, despite the fact, now I'm just going to quote from this piece, despite the fact that the CIA agents were running a secret military operation inside the borders of a friendly nation, which is patently illegal, despite the fact that children, innocent civilians were caught in the crossfire, despite the fact that the whole scheme is run without the approval of Congress or the knowledge of the American people. despite all these things the operation actually worked once the forces of law and order stopped playing by the book and set outside the bonds of acceptable civilized behavior the cartel didn't have a chance and this i mean this is definitely the case in the movie that although this is all a political debacle for the president in the end it's also true that by the time harrison ford gets on to that helicopter with willam defoe and they're being airlifted out of the cartel base or whatever you want to call it, every single member of the cartel has been killed. Every leader of the cartel

has been killed by that point, either by American forces or through circumstance, but they've all been killed. The cartel has largely been dismantled. The covert illegal war actually worked to secure American national security. And I think that's what, you know, one way you could describe the politics of this movie are kind of a little incoherent that's that's maybe the the less charitable way to describe them um but to me it does it does seem to it does seem to speak to an attitude that i certainly believe was prevalent in the 1990s um and uh of course became kind of dominant in the 2000s which is this idea that you know sometimes just have to take the gloves off yes sometimes you just have to you have to ignore what's legal what's right and then

um uh fight fire with fire as it were and in the movie jack ryan kind of exists to say no that's unacceptable you have to do things by the book you have to defend the constitution there's a you know there's a scene that's a trailer it's a trailer right they put it right in the trailer where ryan is standing up to the president and kind of dressing him down in the middle office He actually says the cliché that everybody makes fun of, how dare you, sir, to the president. Yeah. But I think the movie is tapping into something that people very much believe and believe and believed,

which is that when it comes to non-state adversaries like a cartel, like terrorists, that the old rules no longer apply right you know i i think that that is really the core of the most reactionary part of the politics of this movie is that it's suggestion that the u.s. military and should just have absolutely no constraints on its application of violence is a long-standing um right-wing uh belief that goes back to the failure in vietnam being the result of, you know, our limited war there. And we should have just dropped the bomb on them and had it over with. And obviously, you know, this has a certain resonance with the way Colonel Kurtz is fighting the war in apocalypse now with, you know,

and we've seen the modern version of this with Trump's attitude towards foreign policy, which is, you know, bomb the shit out of them, that, you know, we don't have time for these humanitarian considerations. You know, this is, you know, American war, the imagination of American war of the, of the, you know, of a pretty hard, right ilk, which suggests we can win everything if we just don't care about morality and we go for it, which is somewhat belied by the fact that we don't care that much about morality, we do go for it, and we still have problems. you know but but then the it's always it always becomes a kind of a stab in the back story which is again like we were discussing the bureaucrats the politicians the weak liberals are the reason why we lost this war and if we had been able to do what the military can do we would have won and I'm sure there's a version of this will happen with Afghanistan now too so yeah that is like you know on the that that is the part of the movie and the novel it seems that is really the most hard right vision of American foreign policy, which is that where it's being constrained

by, you know, weak and effete forces in the United States. And if only if it were unchained, it would, it would achieve victory in every single case. And we all, we just know that that's its own, it's not true. I mean, and there is very little, you know, it, okay, you know, this brings me to something I wanted to talk about with Patriot Games. And I forgot to, but it fits in perfectly with this movie. And it fits in with all of these movies. And the whole theme of our podcast is the fantasy of unlimited American power. In the scene in Patriot games that we discussed looking like the Bin Laden raid, as well as the scenes in this movie that show commandos striking wherever across the world, our Air Force able to precision strike, you know, a compact

of drug dealers. Not just a compound full of drug dealers, but a particular truck at a compound of drug dealers. Right, right. We dropped the missile,

the bomb right down with a laser guy. Yeah. You know, there's this fantasy of, these movies all partake in one way or the other in a fantasy of

unlimited American power, which really conditioned the way we think about the United States up until the War on Terror in 9-11. When, you know, I remember as a kid, and this reoccurred to me when I was watching Patriot Games in this movie, when 9-11 happened, I told my mom, they're going to kill Bin Laden tonight.

Because I was so indoctrinated in this idea that, you know, oh, we only just have to apply this military power and, you know, it will be done competently by these guys and they'll find them immediately. because I'd seen all these movies where these incredible commando strikes and stuff like that. And it's understandable that after the Cold War that the United States was indulged in that. But, you know, as you pointed out, this is not long after Black Hawk Down, where, you know, we had it, we were sort of had a traumatic experience of the limits of American power. And also, as we talked about in the cover of the newspaper, the U.S.'s lack of action in Rwanda was probably something more interventionist liberals decried than conservatives, but also a point where the U.S. didn't take action and it was felt

to be a horrible mistake and maybe we should have. So these movies definitely build up the image of an American power that really has no limits, and the only obstacle to American power is some kind of internal evil either in the form of politics itself or evil bureaucrats or something like that I mean sort of related so I agree

first of all I absolutely agree that this movie and all these movies have this fantasy of unlimited American power of an United States which can project its power perfectly without any real friction whatsoever And that the only, as you said, the only friction comes when political actors get in the way of the military, of the hyper-competent military doing its job. Again, and I feel compelled to note, a military that is presented in this movie is, again, being multiracial, multicultural, right?

Sort of our kind of our main military character is Hispanic. The other thing I would say on this point is that because the 1990s are this point where the United States stands alone as a superpower, there is a sense that now it's time to take care of things who's neglected within our own borders, right? So this is where the war on drugs, you know, heats up, you know, international operations to sort of shut down cartels and stuff full of drug in the United States, and that's very much a part of this. And there's this idea, this notion that this is all kind of like a mop-up operation, right? That's sort of once we turn our attention to the things we've neglected while dealing with the Soviet Union, we can, we'll have no problems dealing or handling things like cartels or in Patriot games like international terrorism or whatnot.

And the reality of the fact that these things are not particularly simple or clear-cut to deal with, that you can't just exert military power to take care of them. But this movie, for as much as it has somewhat jaundiced view of the national security state, it does maintain this idea that, yeah, with just like a well-timed application of military power, the United States can take care of these clear and present threats to American national security, which may not be existential, but are still at least,

they're at least embarrassing. And the president in this film is, if nothing else, embarrassed by the extent to which cartels can harm American citizens. Yeah, he says, what do you think? What do they think?

We're powerless. We can't do anything about this? Right, exactly. I mean, and I'm thinking, you know, right now I'm thinking of how be, you know, right-wing critique of Clinton was essentially that he was sort of factless and impotent on the

international stage. I mean, that's kind of a common right-wing critique of Democratic presidents, but I think it very much, Clinton being sort of, you know, the first boomer president, the first child of the 60s to become president of the 60s to become president of the United States, I think that was very much a part of the critique of Clinton, which is that this this really this horny guy is not actually prepared to handle American national security

he'll leave us vulnerable to threats that we can we're obviously able to take care of with nothing more than a focused application of military force yeah it's interesting you brought up the horny thing because I was thinking about this in relation to Patriot games and the movie's kind of sexual and gender politics it's like in this movie

those movies like punish people for having extramarital sex a lot and this movie does too like the the the um the FBI director's assistant who gets seduced by the evil latin uh jack ryan character you know gets murdered and um Patriot games like has is a little more sexually explicit than the other movies and it shows like jack's you know romantic life and it also shows like you know know kind of this weird free-flowing sexual energy among the IRA people which is disturbing in the in the in the in the telling of the movie which is maybe a little racist towards Irish people I mean it's kind of it's kind of the those hot-blooded Irish right exactly exactly so and I think that like yeah there's there's a there's a real message like okay like self-control the family these are important virtues to that permit the nation to operate smoothly and it and the the you know unrestrained passions whether they're not there for revenge or for sexuality or so and so forth are what

what creates problems of course ron jack has his own passionate outbursts either out of love for his wife or anger protecting his family or anger over the wrong thing being done but it's really focused and like that's like what the you know the ideological universe the movie suggestions like these these things have to be focused sexuality within the family anger at the bad guys like you know at the violation of the constitution so it's like yeah it imagines like a really well organized american society along you know what are you know pretty traditional republican values and it doesn't imagine that like it imagines the kind of as we talked about the more neocon or pappy bush version of it more than neocon which is a little bit more like well

anybody can be a part of it you don't have to be a white guy you can be we'll take anybody you just got to show that you can do it so there's like a samaritocratic aspect of it which we've talked about and multiracial aspect of it but yeah it's like as long as you behave according to the strictures of wasp morality then you know the the country will will will will work well and the um you know our foreign issues will be solved but but you know correct get those things getting corrupted um is is where where things start to go wrong so yeah i mean like the movies you know doesn't have a huge role for anne archer jack's wife she's but she's not presented as like she's got she's a career like the gender paul is interesting because she's like obviously very

smart she's a career woman she is a doctor and she has you know but she's not like subservient to jack but it's clear it's like look this couple is like an ideal american couple where it's like the guy is really good the woman she's got her own career she can do her own thing but like the guy's in charge and the one out there saving the world so i thought that was kind of interesting about these movies which is their little subtle which is not like for it grounded in a plot at all but they're a little settle pieces of ideology like that well i mean you know in talking about this this podcast remember we're chatting about it online or whatnot it's referred to as a podcast about dad movies and you know i think this these these three tom clancy movies are just extremely

male you know anne archer that jack ryan's wife is the only character who Kathy Ryan is the only character in the three movies only woman character who has a significant speaking role maybe in Patriot games the IRA terrorist woman but she barely I mean she doesn't speak that much

she basically says nothing right she always is constantly like using her sexual attraction to like seduce and destroy her enemies and stuff right yeah exactly yeah but as far as just a speaking role, someone who's recognizably a character, it's really just Kathy Ryan, whether it's Gates McFadden playing her in the hunt for out of October for a moment or in Archer in these other two movies. But the everything else takes place among men. All the drama, all of the emotional lows and highs, all of that is pretty much exclusively male. And I do think, I mean, there is

the 90s are when you are getting this discourse about the feminizing of America, of the American man, of sort of, you know, are American men, and again, I think this is very explicitly related to the greatest generation World War II memorialization, right? Like, are the grandchildren of the men who beat the Nazis capable of inheriting, capable of taking a their inheritance in American manhood. And I can see how in that environment, where this is just a regular, this is a part of the political and cultural conversation that a movie like Clear and Present Danger, and this genre in general, does sort of land infertile ground, right?

People want to watch movies about, you know, competent, virile men. And that's what Harrison Ford is playing here, a hyper-competent, virile man and it's not for nothing and we talked about this in the patriot games episode it's not for nothing that the next republican president after bill clinton is someone who presents himself in exactly that mold yeah i mean you know one of tom clanks who didn't like the idea of harrison ford becoming jack ryan because he felt he was too old and i think that like you know i think Harrison Ford's depiction of Jack Ryan is kind of cool because he presents him, you know, as a dad and as a kind of, you know, as a, as a, you know, it's an assertive type of masculinity, but it's also kind of like a hesitant and bashful one at the same time. And like, he's a good actor and his emotions are interesting in the movie. So I think that Jack, I think that, um, Tom Kines's imagination of Jack Ryan is much dumber and is more like, is more like he's just like a really young strapping you know not very complicated man and you know

I think Harrison Ford's depiction of him is kind of like you know he's like he's a middle class he's slightly domesticated um he would really rather be with his family he's not a and he's an analyst he's not a natural I mean he was in the Marines but he's not a natural action hero and you know he's like he's He's like, he's, he's an office worker. He's a middle class guy who has a family that he would prefer to spend his time with, but he has to do the right thing and, you know, do go out and save the country and be decent and so forth. So, you know, obviously, like, that appeals to middle class fathers who probably from time to time feel that their jobs are not. you know that might be emasculating or something like that but um and they don't have the opportunity to go out and punch bad guys but um you know yeah so i think like the movie's dealing with it in ways it can make like republicans and democrats or liberals and conservatives both happy which it's like they're like he's a good dad and his wife is a smart lady who's got her own career and they've got a

nice family and but he's also like you know a man of action and you know so yeah i mean again like i think the gender and family politics the movies are or something that can that can you know appeal you know have broad appeals across the political and cultural spectrum of the united states and make pretty much everybody happy which is i think like one of the these movies in addition to like the myth of american power that they have also add to the myth of the of American consensus. Like, we can all, we all love Jack Ryan, don't we? And we all know that these are the good guys.

And I think that, you know, it was very, including me, I'll cop to this. It was very traumatic for some American liberals and even leftists to witness the breakdown where we couldn't even agree that there were certain sacred aspects of centrist consensus that shouldn't be touched. So it was almost as if Trump, when he starts insulting everybody in the national security state, is insulting Jack Ryan. And we all know Jack Ryan is a good guy, and we can all agree on. He's not, he's strong, he's out there protecting America, but he's not a racist. You know, his mentor was a black guy, and he looked up to him sincerely.

And, like, you know, I think that in a way, one way of, we talk about this going up to 9-11, but I think we have to think about these movies. going up to Trump too because there was so much of the or a split in the understanding of this ideology which we thought everybody understood in the same way and then we see oh my god we we didn't we weren't watching the same movie at all you know like they they were watching you know the parts where the people get blown up and that's and it's awesome and we were like uh us liberals were like God, that Jack Ryan, decent guy. So there is a, yeah, I think that there was, like, these movies added to this consensus about American values, about American democracy, and what was considered to be, like, good.

And that's the apolitical, that adds into the whole apolitical aspect of it. And, you know, we realized, and I think Obama really, his politics already also participated. You know, we talked about how George W. Bush, in some way, participates in the Jack Ryan University. But I think Barack Obama definitely participates in it. Politics participates in it. You know, and I think it was very traumatic for a lot of people to see Trump really cast aside the illusions, all the ideological illusions that were created by these sorts of films about what was distinctly America and what was good about America. And I don't think all those fictions necessarily are, you know, there are, as we've discussed, there's probably, a time to put them aside. Do I think that they were all totally destructive and bad? No. But I think

you know, the losing some of that mythology that was built up after the Cold War with the rise of Trump is interesting. When looking at these movies again, you're like, what world is this? You know? Yeah. I think you're right. I mean, if there's a guiding mythology through clear and present danger and through these three Jack Ryan movies broadly this sense that American foreign policy does there is a there is exists somewhere a moral center to American foreign policy and it's the task of men like Jack Ryan to continuously bring it in bring it to the foreground sort of there's there's going to be resistance to foregrounding that morality in this movie it's the president and his sort of his crony

is in the Humphabrod October it is the established military establishment that does not want to try to take a chance on whether Sean Connery's character is actually trying to defect

and this is I think a less relevant of Patriot games but it's still there since the antagonist there isn't so much bureaucratic antagonism in that movie um well they i think your your point stands even for patriot games because the traitor is a member is a member of the royal households like diplomatic i mean bureaucratic staff he's like this yeah um so i think your point stands actually that that movie actually

just makes the treason much more explicit right right yeah um but there's there's a there's a moral core that will go can be steered awry for you know be no political reasons but there's there's this these dedicated patriots within the government within the military within the national security state who can bring us back on track and i think what was one of the things that that that was traumatic about Trump that I think, you know, should he return to the stage as a candidate will be reminded of this again, is the extent to which he himself has this, how do I describe this? It is if you were to take the left-wing critique of American foreign policy and personify it as you know a foreign policy that is amoral that is solely interested in uh accumulating capital

and exploiting other nations that is that was trump's vision for american foreign policy and he presents it as sort of like this is what we ought to be doing um it's sort of it's like it's like in some of this weird way he divined the left wing critique and it was like oh that well that actually sounds good we should be we should that's what we should be doing um uh and and the extent to which the public or a large portrait of the public was like, hell yeah, that's exactly what we should be doing. It's sort of a traumatic thing for a lot of liberals to see and absorb because you're right. I think it demonstrates that we didn't have this consensus about the way things ought to be,

even if they really weren't that way at all. Yeah, I mean, I think also just like this movie plays into, there's two things I want to say it's like this movie just plays into the idea I think like liberals just projected the fact that there were like all these conservative Jack Ryans out there that we're going to like you know resist

Trump from within the deep state and stuff like that so you know and people on the left rightly were like well every person that you say as a conservative Jack Ryan who's resisting Trump they did torture or they lied about the Iraq war or something like that

You know, so I think, you know, some of the process of getting rid of these illusions has been healthy. I do think that the other side of it, though, is that the sheer cynicism of Trump and the sheer willingness to engage in what the United States probably was, in essence, doing a lot of these cases, but without the pretense to any kind of moral content to it is not healthy. the the the the just embrace of total cynicism and i i would say that the the the the the misdications and whatever is wrong with the visions and in these films is to be preferred to that level of cynicism and i think that's kind of why i have some nostalgic feelings towards them and i still enjoy them as films and think they're good um the other thing i wanted to say is This movie has a stock character, which I think we will encounter in a lot of the films that we're talking about, which I like to call a spicy bureaucrat, which is played by, you know, the deputy director for operations.

Who's that great character actor who plays him? Henry Zerney. Yeah. And, like, this is like a, you know, we were talking about this the other day. there is a certain aspect in which, and this is hugely a part of our cultural conversation now after COVID, after Trump, there's a part of where expertise, at bureaucratic and technocratic expertise is a certain kind of like public performance of competence. And like we invest a lot in that public performance of competence. And then there's two ways of dealing with. These

kind of evil machiavellian spicy bureaucrat guy who's like knows all the angles and and is you know twisting the system for evil and then there's these like jack ryan virtuous admiral greer virtuous figures but it's interesting me like these movies depict like they show literally because it's a it's a it's a performance like yeah they depict bureaucratic competence aside from politics with the theater of politics is a little bit more widely known and acknowledged than the theater of bureaucratic expertise but these movies prime us to to think about those characters as having certain amounts of competence even if it's evil competence or expertise even if it's used for for bad and I think it's just really interesting

And again, this plugs into the way we've sort of become so disillusioned about certain aspects of our culture, our political culture, is that a lot of these figures of unalloyed competence and expertise don't seem so plausible in the present, or we have nostalgia for them, or kind of almost fetishistic worship of them. But does anybody really believe it? No. I mean, after Iraq, is it even possible to believe in it? I mean, I think maybe Colin Powell was the last person. We might have said something like that about. And it's impossible to say that about him now because we all know what happened. I mean, look, I think when he died, it's interesting that his character Greer dies in the movie because it's almost like a pre-imagining of Colin Powell's death. And then there's this very moving scene of his funeral where the president is eulogizing him and it's cut with the scenes of the American soldiers being shot and killed. after being betrayed, and it's a wonderful scene of dramatic irony. And, you know, the president's words are empty.

He's betrayed American soldiers. And the true spirit of America is dead and is being eulogized. And, you know, I think there was a real effort after the death of Colin Powell to sort of end the death of John McCain to go through that kind of ritual where we celebrate the life of a super political statesman type figure and it didn't really work it was too complicated and we know too much now you know and I think that that's good in certain ways but I sort of felt a sort of you know when I was listening to the coverage of Colin Powell and I heard his former associates very movingly eulogize him on the radio and they were obviously very emotionally affected by it

I was like, I can see what they're trying to do, and I am not unaffected by it because I grew up primed to respond to these sorts of things by these movies, by et cetera, et cetera. But I don't think it really works anymore because I know, I remember what happened during the Iraq War. I remember the careers of all these people. And the kind of state, the kind of rising above and forgetting that I think American ideology relies on is just no longer working because of the, immediate access of the historical record that we have now where it's just like dude i fucking well first of all i lived through it but i'm like i can google in two seconds i can tell you everything wrong this security official did you know like there's no mystery you don't need a journalist to work for years and years and years to gather all the information so it's interesting like i wonder how much

these performances of public and civic virtue which i think are important in a certain way and i don't want to completely condemn, but I don't think they're working anymore. And I think that they maybe we just need to, that means we just need to have higher standards. But I was wondering what you thought about that. And especially, I know we were talking a little bit after the death of Colin Powell, but as that is a public event. That's, that's a great observation. It is, you know to the extent that we were Americans were able to at least sort of like indulge the fantasy of the virtuous national security bureaucrat in the 90s or at least in the early 90s it is because again it's it's coming after this great ideological struggle that

was the Cold War so American victory in the Cold War even if it wasn't necessarily military victory was a victory of national security state. And thus the the virtues of that victory can kind of be like imposed upon the members of that state. So like to use Colin Powell as the example, it's not just that he was sort of the general who crafted the Victoria strategy in the Gulf War, but sort of he, you know, all that's coming as the Soviet Union has collapsed as America is taking its preeminent role in the world. And so Cole and Powell ends up being kind of the the avatar for all of these developments, right? It's sort of for for triumphant America, for diverse America, for all of these things.

But there has not been there have not been victories the same way, right? That can serve that purpose of, say, laundering the reputations of everyone involved in this stuff. um the iraq wars obviously a debacle afghanistan obviously a debacle um uh and be the record of the american military at least in these terms and of national security state has been less of triumph um and more of sort of failure right there's been no big dramatic victory other than i suppose the bin laden raid in 2011 but even then that didn't really have like a singular person associated with it and its political dividends don't don't appear to have lasted very very long past that and so i'm not sure i am not sure like you that it's it's possible to even have that kind of um you know public

understanding public admiration for a figure they they have tried they tried hard with colm powell they've tried very hard with john mccain but uh the be the distance from the events that made them household names is great enough that it's just not it's overshadowed by um by the events of the last 20 years really of you know 2001 to to 2009 yeah i think it's also just like it's murder like the the thing about the thing that's going on now is there's no way and And this comes out in that scene in Patriot games where Jack Wright is looking quite disturbed in the same way the famous pictures of Barack Obama looks very perturbed watching the bin Laden raid.

It's like the way we do war now is murder. It's very focused. I mean, maybe it always was, but it's very focused and concentrated assassination, essentially. And, you know, it's very difficult for that to have the same kind of air of heroism as previous eras of warfare so we are celebrating it's difficult like I think that's why we're going to talk about this eventually but American sniper was such a complicated movie on an ideological level it's just like the form warfare has taken and what we know about it is so unheroic and so cold and calculated and murderous that it's just like even when people celebrate it like what's

getting celebrated is like you're not you're not celebrating like soldiers seizing a hill you're celebrating a death squad like that's you know so it's just like it's very difficult for the same air of heroic bravery and conduct to be attached to all these things and you know in the case of the civil war i mean in the case of the cold war the combination of you know um the combination of statesmanship and being brave and resolute in the face of the soviet threat which whatever but um you know i think that this just really difficult even for people who are into it to fully you know get the sense that you know this is this is a war and this is not just like Okay, this is systematic political assassinations undertaken to carry out, you know, our foreign policy.

And I'll say I think some of this shows up in clear and present danger. And part of the political, part of the political risk for the president in this movie is precisely that people will not see this as sort of a just war, but it's kind of, yeah, an assassination squad going after, going after anonymous rivals and killing kids in the process. I think we should wrap up soon. So any last thoughts? I think this is one of, I mean, okay, so my love for Hunt for October is infinite. But this is really, I think in terms of the themes and all of the things it says about American ideology, nationalism, foreign policy, this is maybe the most interesting one of the movies. and it's interesting that the public responded so enthusiastically to it and critics critics kind of seemed to think that the public was going to lose patience with it

and find the plot to be too dense or something like that but then people just loved it and couldn't get enough of it and I think probably because like I said at the beginning it just it touched on all these serious issues in a way that wasn't too obtrusive or preachy and allowed people to just enjoy it as a thriller but it's like yeah there's a lot of things going on here that are about america and it's foreign policy that are being dealt with you know in a relatively intelligent and sensitive way and obviously it comes with all the bullshit that we all grew up with but it also kind of in a way has aspects where it shows that it is bullshit or or these things are bad and problematic.

So it's a very interesting movie, and I get something out of it every time I watch it. No, I agree. And I think, I mean, I like to think how this movie, how would a movie be received for me today? And I think that the extent to which the movie that's positive sort of a virtuous bureaucratic establishment, or at least virtuous bureaucrats,

would not land well. But certainly the critiques. or the jaded eye the movie takes towards the conduct of American foreign policy would be, I think, very much in keeping with the present-day mood. And I can imagine this movie coming out today and actually being a flashpoint of controversy, right, for its depiction of the national security state, which is just an interesting thing you think about.

I don't think you would necessarily think of a time. of Clancy movie of having that kind of heat, but this one, for whatever reason, does. Maybe it's because the screenwriters and the creative team saw something in Clancy's story that Clancy didn't necessarily put there, but it's certainly there, although some of it, you know, as we discussed, Clancy in this novel is a little more, a little more skeptical than he typically is but um i you know i i i i love this movie i think it's incredibly watchable um uh and i think i think it's sort of i think when people think about this genre of movie this is what they're thinking of like this is it's this look this rhythm this sort of tone this is what

people are thinking of when i think of these movies and i think that's that's for i think it's archetypal for a reason for a good reason at that yeah i have one last thought which is that the and it's kind of a downer so i'm sorry that's okay but the the the i think the most naive and unrealistic part of this movie is this assumption that the united states is a functioning democracy because it's it's it's it's like it's going it's like oh it's incredibly it's incredibly serious to have lied to congress it's incredibly serious that the president didn't an illegal war and this is all going to come out and the committees will find it out and the media will take it silly and that's like perhaps the most appealing part of the movie in some

way but maybe the most unrealistic unfortunately right right i mean it's it's it's a movie that in that sense it's like very much stuck in the post watergate era where it did seem as if like the institutions of accountability worked but if this movie is supposed to be processing iran contra then the thing about iran contra is that like no one gave a shit Yeah, yeah, it was, it was really, everyone got away with it, and really very little was changed. And we see, unfortunately, the effects of not taking these sorts of inquiries seriously going on to the present day. Right. But, yeah.

Okay, well, that was clear in present danger, everyone. Our next, so as always, this podcast comes out every other week. And so our next movie is not going to be a Tom Clanton movie, because there were only three Clancy movies made in the 90s. The next one is the sum of all fears, which is released in 2002. So instead of jumping into the 2000, what we're going to do is we're going to go back to the beginning of the decade and kind of move through this genre of film in a mostly chronological manner.

Sometimes we may break chronology just to talk about something we want to talk about. But for now, we're going to go chronological. And we're not going to start in 1990 necessarily. We're going to start with the very, very late Cold War. And so our next episode will be on the 1987 Kevin Costner thriller No Way Out, which I've never seen. I don't know, have you seen it, John? No, I've never even heard of it.

There you go. So I'm very interested, yeah. I've never seen it. I've heard very good things. Every time I've mentioned this to people, they are excited to hear what I have to say. So that will be our next episode coming to you two weeks from when this was released. So in December, until then, that is our show. If you are not a subscriber to the Uncleared and Present Danger podcast, please subscribe.

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