Actually, that movie has quite a few actors well known today. IIRC, Clark Gregg (Agent Coulson from MCU/Agents of SHIELD) is also there.
For Sum, less soapboxy than on-the-nose. It's like the screenwriter and director said, "Okay, just so everybody knows the the word 'fear' is in the title, let's have Ryan say the word every two seconds." Clear is definitely more preachy than the other movies and the book it's based on. I don't consider ExecOrders preachy because I agree with most everything in it, evrything from his cabinet choices to "The Ryan Doctrine." What's really preachy is the ending of Rainbow Six, but I just say "Preach, Brother!"
My favorite actor of all time. He's mostly known to Star Trek fans - he's played over a dozen roles in various Trek shows. Linky
That's the Jack Ryan I love.. just a regular office worker on an adventure he didn't expect.. making wisecracks about it
Vaughn Armstrong has had many guest appearances in the Berman years of Star Trek, though a majority of his roles are in the last few years of Voyager and Enterprise. He's probably best recognized as Admiral Forrest on Enterprise. In Clear and Present Danger, he played the helicopter pilot.
"Just" voice work. People are not so dismissive of Andy Serkis. Besides, he made that dragon feel unique
Saw this movie at the Eglington Theater here in Toronto in 1990, on opening day, which I had to line up outside in the cold to see. Still an amazing movie, and the Star Trek references are a plus.
Yeah, in the novels when Jack Ryan becomes President, Clancy definitely used Jack Ryan as a proxy to express his own political views. It was pretty obvious that Jack Ryan was Clancy's ideal of what a US President should be like.
Agreed but i still would have liked to see some aspects of the book in the movie, mainly to show the US and the USSR coming ever closer to all out war. I love one scene in the book where a flight of A10s approaches the soviet fleet hugging the ground to avoid radar, at the last moment they pop up and release flares to show they could have sunk the soviet ship - the flightleader thinks "These flares could have been bombs!" (something like it, it's been ages since i read the book). Would have made for an awesome action scene but i guess at the time too expensive to do and movies are notoriously tight on time when they adapt books.
LOL at the comments about Connery literally chewing scenery. "Personally, I give us a one in three chance..." CHOMP! CHOMP! CHOMP!
His explanation though is brilliant and completely understandable - for the guy who basically trained the Soviet Sub Commanders and knowing the Soviet Navy inside out he knows exactly what they will do and how they will do it, so he can slip through the cracks. The wildcard will be the reaction of the Americans which he can't predict as easily. If Ryan didn't have that moment of clarity during the staff meeting the US Navy they might have hunted Red October down and sunk it off the US coast. That's why the movie is brilliant and tense and still holds up today - all the twists and turns, a brilliant cast and cool submarine action. One of my favorite quotes is: "We're going to kill a friend, Yevgeni. We're going to kill Ramius." The delivery is what kills me - even though Cpt. Tupolev is not portrayed nicely in previous dialogue i can't help but feel that Tupolev is a bit sad and disheartened by that order but being a military man he will follow that order and try to kill Ramius. Awesome scene!
I tell ya, as a child of the Cold War, that one-second cut of Ramius holding both launch keys in his hands sent a quick chill up my spine.
I love that scene too, and I remember it well. The whole point of the exercise is for the US to send a message to the Soviet fleet, and the whole organization of it was part of the message. They sent Air Force land attack birds instead of Navy ones as part of the message. They sent an Air National Guard unit instead of a frontline one as part of the message. After the attack, as the jets were turning for home, the flightleader sees the Kirov turning to evade and thinks If this had been real, you'd all be dead now. Get the message? I think I've read that one passage more times than I've read the whole book.
And boy would that be a crowd cheering "USA - Hell yeah!" moment - it would have just been a scene a minute long. Oh well, i'm not mad, the movie is fantastic without it.