Buy it... if you enjoy functional, basic patriotic music that takes action to a brainless, but evenly consistent level of unoriginality.

Avoid it... if any small measure of James Horner's self-quotation habits make you grind your teeth.

Horner

Clear and Present Danger: (James Horner) After beginning the original trilogy of Jack Ryan films with an overwhelming cinematic and soundtrack success in the form of The Hunt for Red October, the series of adaptations of Tom Clancy's novels to the big screen progressed with less fanfare to Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. While the first film had the advantage of conveying the most interesting story, the subsequent entries suffered from a lack of self-importance as the criminal attention turned more towards Ryan and his family rather than events of a global scale. Harrison Ford was almost becoming typecast as "the average Joe who has to do something extraordinary" during this time, and the sequel films --if they can really be called that--- took on a similarly formula-restricted approach. This less inspired method of filmmaking translated directly to James Horner's scores for the two sequels. While his intention was certainly not to try to match the impact of Basil Poledouris' score for The Hunt for Red October on its film, Horner's work for the sequels is easily out-classed by Poledouris. Weighed heavily by its own ethnicity and electronic emphasis, Patriot Games remains one of the most disappointing scores in Horner's career. For Clear and Present Danger, the setting and circumstances are far different, and yet just as Ford runs around and looks worried in the same old way, Horner provides rehash after rehash of ideas in his final entry in the series. If Horner is to be whipped in public for his adaptation and blatant re-use of his own material, Clear and Present Danger is one of the more obvious points of evidence to use against him. Not only does he lift ideas from his previous works for Clear and Present Danger, but he copies significant sections of music note for note. Ironically, he even pulls a few interpretations from stock Jerry Goldsmith action music for the era, with a title theme largely predicting where Goldsmith would venture in Air Force One (that's right, another film with Ford running around looking scared). The overall result is a dull, repetitious, and predictable experience.

This is, without a doubt, James Horner on autopilot. While you have to give the man some credit for at least conjuring some basic, unique sense of direction for Patriot Games (as flawed as it might have been), he tries absolutely nothing new here. A very bland title theme featuring simplistic, patriotic progressions (taking a page or two from In Country) leaves the excitement at the door and fails to make any significant appearance throughout the mid-sections of the film. Surprisingly, the lack of originality that prevails in Clear and Present Danger applies to even the sub-motifs for individual scenes. A nearly constant pan pipe rhythm flutters in the distance (but not mixed with the same precision as in Legends of the Fall that year) over snare pronouncements that hail back to Glory. A wildly crashing piano pounds from high octaves to low with the same effect as in The Pelican Brief and other suspense scores from Horner. Brass broods in low ranges, forming mini-crescendos at each bar of music similar in style to Brainstorm. A selection of tapping and clicking sounds seems classified in the Horner sound library under the title of Sneakers. Many of the more tense action cues lift entire sequences from Aliens, which will be a certain annoyance for some listeners. The only remotely interesting new avenue that Horner explores is the electronic keyboarding in "The Laser-Guided Missile" and "Escobedo's New Friend," but even this attempt to supply the bad-guys in the film with their own style is lackluster in execution. Only in a few snippets throughout the score does Horner offer a short piece of music that accentuates the film with striking appeal. The single piano notes and tapping of cymbals at the opening of "Operation Reciprocity" (repeated with brass to open "Second Hand Copter") and the explosively heroic climax of the "Ambush" cue offer brief glimpses of the quality of music that Clear and Present Danger probably deserved. That said, for a casual listener who could not care less about Horner's self-quotations, this score is adequate at worst, and enjoyable on album for a smooth, brainless listening experience. For Horner collectors, however, you have either heard this music before in superior form in any one of the aforementioned scores, or you would hear far better, more inspired executions of those ideas in Horner's upcoming scores for Legends of the Fall, Apollo 13, and Courage Under Fire. Parts of it, in fact, would be tracked into Ransom. On album, a 2001 re-pressing is identical in music to the 1994 original, both released by Milan. Overall, Clear and Present Danger is functional, but dull and unoriginal. ***

Bias Check:

For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.14 (in 90 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.33 (in 164,127 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.