Unfortunately, Ryan's lack of any real political experience means that he quickly finds himself in over his head. And Ryan's troubles go from bad to worse when a friend of the President's is killed in a drug cartel related shooting. While Ryan has just addressed Congress and asked for an increase in funding (with the promise that no troops would be used in the recent Columbian events), the President's National Security Advisor, James Cutter (Harris Yulin) has just been authorized to send a black-ops team onto the cartel's turf and do whatever they need to in order to remove the threat.
As plans get laid out and assassination attempts come to fruition, Ryan finds that he is being set up as a scapegoat, and the only way to expose everyone is for Ryan himself to go to Columbia and try to stop the killing spree before it's too late.
While all of the Jack Ryan films are good action flicks, I've always felt that Clear and Present Danger was one of the more forgettable ones. Actually, I always tend to get it and Patriot Games confused. I know they are two different plots (the other involving an assassination attempt on British royals), but the feel of the movies are just too close. In the end, this is still a good action film with lots of shootouts, and of course Harrison Ford, but is probably best for the existing fans of the Tom Clancy books to movies.
