The Presidio (1988)

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Better Late Then Never

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Two men kill an MP at the Presidio base during a break-in. This leads to a wild chase in San Francisco killing two cops. Police detective Jay Austin (Mark Harmon) is assigned the case. He is forced to deal with MP Lieutenant Colonel Alan Caldwell (Sean Connery). Years before, Caldwell was his commanding officer. He arrested Colonel Paul Lawrence (Dana Gladstone) but Caldwell wouldn't back him. He quited over the incident. Lawrence is again a suspect in the new case. Austin and Caldwell's relationship gets even worst when Austin starts dating Caldwell's daughter Donna (Meg Ryan).Before Mark Harmon made it on NCIS, he played a variety of roles including cops like this one. This seems set for a great thriller pairing him with a veteran like Connery. Yet this is less than that. Some of it is the fact that their characters don't get along. This is no buddy cop drama. The investigation is forgettable. Meg Ryan is doing a sex kitten thing. Everything is functional but not much more. Nobody is really excelling in this one.

A break-in at a military base leads to a murder; the perpetrators' escape causes the death of a cop outside the base, so the case will involve both the San Francisco P.D. and the military police. Former MP Jay Austin (Mark Harmon) is now a detective who will butt heads with his old commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Alan Caldwell (Sean Connery). They'll argue about methodology, and jurisdiction, and other such things, and Jay will naturally fall in lust with Caldwells' conveniently cute daughter Donna (Meg Ryan).Although there are some good moments for the main actors - Jack Warden also among them, as Caldwells' longtime friend Ross Maclure - this movie is more entertaining during its murder investigation scenes. It IS played awfully straight, with not much in the way of humour, but then, this is more of a serious thriller than the typical buddy-cop action film. It does also have, however, a ridiculous scene that serves no real purpose to the plot other than to show how bad ass Connery is, as he beats up Rick Zumwalt (as a bully in a bar) with his THUMB. Slickly made, with capable direction by Peter Hyams, who again serves as as his own cinematographer (and does a better job of lighting the proceedings than usual). The location work in SF is excellent, fortunately.The handsome Harmon is passable as our likable good guy protagonist, but he doesn't have much chemistry with either Connery or Ryan. The supporting cast is solid: Mark Blum, Marvin J. McIntyre, Dana Gladstone, the much too briefly seen Jenette Goldstein, Don Calfa (in a quick cameo), John DiSanti, Robert Lesser, Patrick Kilpatrick, etc., but Connery is the principal reason to watch "The Presidio". His effortlessly strong presence lends itself well to the role of a career military man.This is easy enough to watch, but also easy enough to forget.Six out of 10.

If anybody told me 10 years ago that there is a thriller starring (Sean Connery) and (Meg Ryan) together and I won't be able to bear it to its end 3 times.. Maybe I would call him names, smash at least his face, and destroy his future for good !!!Just kidding. But the makers of this movie weren't ! However they made a movie which impelled me to wonder; what's the secret of that one's silliness ??I'm crazy about the queen of cheerfulness (Ryan) and the original James Bond (Connery). And yes, I'm not a fan of (Mark Harmon). But none of them is the one to blame here.Maybe it's the screenplay which was so tense between being a movie about having peace among one family and in one's soul, or being a bang bang action thriller. Both ways I thought it did an accepted job so you can see (The Presidio) as a mediocre social Film or a mediocre action movie !! But I didn't have a real fun while watching. Mainly because some kind of lame direction from (Peter Hyams), so with the low budget you might think it's a TV movie. And a boring one too !The only thing which survived, and still that original till now, is of course the love scene between (Meg Ryan) and (Mark Harmon) IN THE STREET !! When their love was exploding to the extent that they almost made love on the parked cars ! That's the one and only thing to enjoy in such a languid tasteless movie. But knowing that (Ryan) will end up in the arms of (Harmon) kept eating me all the time to tell you the truth. So here's another reason to dislike the whole thing!P.S : I've never ever commented on a movie without finishing it. So I had to watch the end of (Presidio) at last but in the fourth time. Yes, I was that board to death to find any other more important thing to do !!

Detective Jay Austin (Mark Harmon) was sure that somebody wanted something badly from the storeroom that night… So he broke in and killed his friend, an MP, Patti Jean Lynch (Jeanette Goldstein) during her routine patrol… Austin used to be an MP under Lt. Colonel Caldwell's (Sean Connery) command… He thought he could use the Colonel's help avoiding other channels… His instinct tells him that the bullet belongs to someone on the base… What we get here is an investigation involving both the Army and the San Francisco Police Department… Now, while Caldwell considers Austin a man who has no respect for women and he'll use his daughter (whom he loves too much) to get at him… his friend, Sgt. Maj. Ross Maclure (Jack Warden) knows that Donna is not a little girl anymore, and that her father doesn't want her to grow up… As a woman in love, Donna (Meg Ryan) knows that her father and Austin don't like each other… So she decides to find out about Austin, and about that incident in the Presidio, where the female MP that was shot to death was with Austin when he busted Colonel Paul Lawrence (Dana Gladstone)… The investigation takes a turn when Caldwell knew that Arthur Peale (Mark Blum)—a former province adviser to the CIA in Vietnam—owns the Black Mountain Water Company… Slowly, he begins to perceive that there's a piece missing, something worth killing for… The film carries two car chases in the streets of San Francisco, a good fight in a bar, and a climactic shoot-out in a water bottling plant