Clear and Present Danger is a 1994 American spy thriller film directed by Phillip Noyce, based on Tom Clancy's book of the same name. It was preceded by the 1990 film The Hunt for Red October and the 1992 film Patriot Games, all three featuring Clancy's fictional character Jack Ryan. It is the last film version of Clancy's novels to feature Harrison Ford as Ryan and James Earl Jones as Vice Admiral James Greer, as well as the final one directed by Noyce.

As in the novel, Ryan is appointed U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Acting Deputy Director, and discovers he is being kept in the dark by colleagues who are conducting a covert war against drug lords in Colombia, apparently with the approval of the President of the United States. The film premiered in theaters in the United States on August 3, 1994, and was a major financial success, earning over $200 million at the box office.

Plot

A U.S. Coast Guard patrol boat stops a suspicious yacht, discovering that an American businessman and his family have been murdered by several men operating the craft. The murdered man happens to have been a close friend of the President. President Bennett (Moffat) learns that the man was murdered because of his ties to a drug cartel, having skimmed over $650 million from it. The President tells James Cutter (Yulin), his National Security Advisor, that Colombian drug cartels represent a "clear and present danger" to the U.S., indirectly giving him unofficial permission to kill the men responsible for his friend's murder. When Vice Admiral Jim Greer (Jones) is stricken with terminal cancer, Jack Ryan (Ford) is appointed Deputy Director of Intelligence and is asked to go before the U.S. Congress to request increased funding for ongoing (CIA) operations in Colombia.