CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER (B) is really a really informative and engaging primer on the complexities of intelligence work and politics for the first two thirds of the film before it gives itself over to a traditional Hollywood action climax that feels underwhelming and out of place. Jack Ryan, played again here by a righteous and morally upstanding Harrison Ford, is back in the CIA and instead of Russians or Irish extremists, the new threat on the block are drug cartels. Most of the film does a remarkably great job slowly unfolding the complexities of drug enforcement, national intelligence work vs undercover secret operations, congressional oversight, and all of the politics that get caught up between everyone involved. That's no easy task, yet director Philip Noyce and the screenwriters have taken Clancy's dense novel and made it a very difficult and complex subject accessible and engaging. I was locked in as the story kept revealing more and more layers that while exaggerated for the screen, I knew had plenty of roots in real world operations. Heck, there's even a healthy subtext of how these kinds of decisions and steps were part of the run-up to Vietnam. Unfortunately, once Ford's Ryan makes his way down to Columbia to take matters into his own hands and become a much more traditional hero in a traditional movie shootout - the whole thing really falters. Let Arnold and Sylvester do their thing and give us more sequences of Ryan outsmarting, outwitting, or even out-computering his opponents. Aside from a poor decision, much like in Patriot Games, to go traditional with its action climax, I do appreciate the political ending we get with Ryan learning Washington politics but not being changed by them. Overall, this is easily the most sophisticated and layered of the Jack Ryan films and had they found a better way to bring the action to a close, it could have been a real contender for one of the best political thrillers ever made.