Please Post: Clear and Present Danger is an insipid, stupidly predictable, hackneyed Hollywood vehicle, which should come as a surprise to no one. The narrative is formulaic, the characters are thinly-drawn and unconvincing and the dialog is so wooden it is frequently laughable ("It's that old Potomac two-step, Jack..."--"Sorry, Mr. President...I don't dance.") when it is not nauseating ("Remember, Jack, you took an oath to your boss...not the President, but his boss...the American People!"...this from James Earl Jones, gurgling and spitting on his death bed). Even more irritating is the way this film falls back on the same insidious contrivances that destroyed Patriot Games. Many of you have probably read Q. Tarantino's wicked reduction of that schlock-fest, from an interview by Dennis Hopper, reproduced in last month's Harper's. Tarantino waxes vitriolic about the climax, in which the arch-villain dies by falling on a sharp anchor. Tarantino correctly observes that "You should go to movie jail for killing your villain by having him fall on an anchor. You have violated the rules of good cinema." (Paraphrase.) Well, it happens again in Clear and Present Danger, or nearly so. I will refrain from giving away the plot, even though there is absolutely nothing suspenseful about this eminently derivative climax. Suffice to say that Harrison Ford escapes his nemesis through the unconscious agency of logs. This miserable plot resolution arises out of the perceived need for two plot elements: one, Ford must fight hand-to-hand with the villain; and two, Ford must not dirty his hands or conscience by directly killing the villain. When forced together, these elements destroy any potential thrill of the denoument. Needless to say, however, the bulk of the audience adored it, hanging slack-jawed and glassy-eyed through every unspeakably trite segment. Another sour note: Ann Magnuson, the formerly brilliant performance artist and member of the seminal postmodern punk outfit Bongwater, plays a giddy, brainless secretary too busy gushing over her latin romeo to think about the security of her drug-addled nation. What is more depressing, that they offered her the role, or that she accepted and played it so sickeningly straight? I fear that this proves again that the so-called counterculture is nothing more than a training ground for the big-money league. Magnuson will probably return to the arts circle and do a scathingly witty performance piece about her dreadful, but disturbingly alluring days in Hollywood. But the inevitability of such a piece does not negate the very real evidence that Magnuson has sold out in the most demeaning manner. Any thoughts? Bryan McCann