Clear and Present Danger

This week we are experiencing some technical difficulties because Apple absolutely wrecked my audio set-up with an unnecessary OS update that doesn't seem to have made anything better. That's beside the point, but I did want to apologize off the hop. Anyway. The Hunt For The American James Bond continues both in our hearts and on the show, as we dip our toes into the chilly waters of Lake Jack Ryan one last time with 1994's Clear and Present Danger, directed once again by Phillip Noyce, based on the book by Tom Clancy, and starring Harrison Ford, Willem Dafoe, Joaquim de Almeida, Henry Czerny, Harris Yulin, Donald Moffat, Miguel Sandoval, Benjamin Bratt, Anne Archer, Thora Birch and James Earl Jones. Patriot Games set the bar pretty low, and this movie comfortably clears it. But it doesn't hit the heights of Hunt For Red October either, leaving us with a somewhat satisfying if not overly long political thriller about drug cartels and American intelligence. There's room to have fun there if you're willing to acknowledge how skeezy the CIA actually is, but perhaps we weren't there yet in '94. Other works discussed in this episode include Poor Things, The Holdovers, Edge of Tomorrow, Top Gun: Maverick, The Flash, and 24. Plus, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One gets renamed for streaming. This is the third ADHD-DVD film with a Steven Zaillian writing credit. The previous were Mission: Impossible and Gangs of New York. If you'd like to watch the film along with us, good luck! It is not available for streaming in Canada, but is rentable on YouTube. We'll be back next week to wrap up the month with a third consecutive Phillip Noyce movie, the admittedly very goofy Val Kilmer vehile The Saint (1997) that is also sadly not available for streaming in Canada. We'll be joined by gifted improviser (and J Mo's childhood friend) Mica Prazak to discuss whether it deserves to be added to the canon, or loaded into a cannon. Until then, see you at the movies!!