CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER (1994)

The President gets all pissed off when a friend of his, who just happened to skim $650 million off of some dealings he had with a South American drug cartel, is murdered by that same drug cartel.  The President gives his henchmen permission to take out the drug cartel.  Secretly, of course.  At the same time, Jack Ryan (Ford) is appointed Deputy Director of the CIA.  He has no idea about the black-ops stuff happening in South America.  When he discovers what's going on, he heads down to SA himself to rescue the men that were left behind.  Of course there's tons of other shit is going on, but you'll just have to see for yourself.  It's all very exciting.

Much more violence than the first two Jack Ryan films, grander scale and story, 141 minute runtime that flies by, explosions, helicopters, small appearance by Hope Lange, jets, Hollywood-style computer hacking, James Earl Jones, snipers, solid acting, a gigantic computer monitor, enjoyable bad guys.  I really enjoyed CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER, but I was disappointed in the lack of screen time for Archer, Birch and the complete absence of J. E. Freeman.  Good 90's thriller.

Part 1 -The Hunt for Red October (1990)
Part 2 - Patriot Games (1992)
Reboot 1 - The Sum of All Fears (2002)
Reboot 2 - Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)

JOHN CARTER (2012)

Civil War-era soldier John Carter finds himself on the run from some Indians.  He's holed up in a cave when suddenly a funny looking dude appears and tries to kill Carter with a knife.  Carter beats the crap out of the guy and accidentally transports himself to Mars with the odd amulet the man was holding.  Once on Mars, John finds that because of the difference in gravity on Mars he's now superstrong and can jump super fucking high.  Added to this, John gets himself involved with an ongoing conflict between the three biggest groups on Mars...mainly due to the fact that the daughter of the blue group is hot as fuck!

As far as entertainment goes, JOHN CARTER is a good watch, but despite all of the bizarre creatures and action-packed sequences I still just felt kinda "blah" about the whole thing.  The biggest things that could have turned this into something more promising would have been: 1) different director.  I love FINDING NEMO and WALL-E is one of the greatest films of all time, but Stanton was just not the man for this job. 2) don't make Carter so depressing. 3) make Carter less indestructible. 4) make the Tharks less cartoonish and more threatening. 5) streamline the script.  There was way too much stuff going on.

Not a great film or a bad film, just merely a mediocre one.  That said, the ending was the best part and I probably would watch a sequel just to find out what happened.