The Presidio

Buy This Item The Presidio by Paramount  Available from Amazon  $14.95  on 11-29-2008     The titular piece of real estate is the San Francisco military base that starts at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge and sprawls back into the city itself, coexisting uneasily with Baghdad by the Bay. The two cultures clash when a murder at the Presidio is assigned to civilian police detective Mark Harmon. Harmon has an uncomfortable history with the base commander, Sean Connery, and that relationship doesn't get any less tense when he also becomes romantically entangled with Connery's daughter, Meg Ryan. Unfortunately, the script by Larry Ferguson is a stiff, which suits Harmon's acting style. Director Peter Hyams knows how to choreograph an action sequence, but he has to keep stopping so that Harmon can actually speak. Thankfully, Harmon has the always-interesting Connery and Ryan to interact with, but that's only a small saving grace. --<I>Marshall Fine</I> Reader Reviews 1988's "The Presidio" paired veteran actor Sean Connery with a young Mark Harmon and a younger Meg Ryan in a rather mundane San Francisco murder mystery. The movie was set at the U.S. Army's beautiful Presidio of San Francisco military base and in San Francisco itself. Connery is Lieutenant Colonel Caldwell, the cantankerous, by-the-book Provost Marshal of the Presidio; Harmon is Jay Austin, forced out of the military by Caldwell and now a hot-headed San Francisco police detective. When a military policeman is murdered during a break-in at the Presidio Officer's Club, the two must cooperate on the investigation. Their difficult relationship is made more challenging by Austin's attraction to Caldwell's beautiful but rebellious daughter, played with aggressive gusto by Meg Ryan. The murder investigation leads to a conspiracy with ties back to the Vietnam War, culminating in a violent shoot-out in a bottled water warehouse. The plot will seem clumsy to audiences now savy on crime forensics; the even clumsier dialogue sometimes threatens to bury the movie altogether. The movie has its redeeming features. Connerly and Harmon manage to craft a little "old bull, young bull" buddy chemistry on screen. A scene in which Caldwell impresses Austin by using a little hopkido to clean up a bar with a loud-mouthed drunk may be the highpoint of the movie. The movie makes good use of its location shooting around the Presidio. This movie is recommended as mild entertainment for fans of Sean Connery and Mark Harmon.

The Presidio Available from Amazon Price: $14.95 Updated on 11-29-2008.

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