When The Bad
Guys Come You Want Sean Connery On The Case -Once Against The Bad Guys Fall Into
The Abyss-Sean Connery’s “Presidio” (1988)-A Film Review
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DVD Review
By Leslie Dumont
Presidio,
starring Sean Connery, Mark Harmon, 1988
Every since
he was 007 James Bond the one man spy ring to save the crumbling British
Empire, worth saving or not, Sean Connery has seemingly never given a bad
performance. That is the case here with Presidio.
Maybe it is Sean’s ruggedly handsome no nonsense looks and his bravado
manner but as long as he has played the avenging angel of John Milton’s poetry
or some such classic of the Greek or English literary canon he can’t go wrong.
In street language he puts the hurt, the big step off on the bad guys. No
questions asked, no quarter given.
Of course
now, in 2018, the Presidio which brought either terror to young Army recruits
when it was a point of debarkation for the hellish war in Vietnam or delight to
be on the Pacific West Coast, to be in sunny and thoughtful California if you
drew an assignment there, the place is mainly shut up against the Golden Gate
Bridge except the golf course which devotee Si Lannon of this publication says
is a bear to play (and maybe why avid golfer Connery took the role, just a
thought). Of course as well a military installation close by the city streets
of San Francisco is going to have some jurisdiction problems if some crime
spills out from the fort to those mean streets.
That is the
underlying tension between Provost Marshall, the sheriff, chief of police, in
military speak played by Connery and one wild boy ex-Army MP, played by Mark
Harmon, who was then working for the SF Police Department. A murder, a vicious
no hold barred murder if there is any other kind, occurred on the fort and the
villains fled to the streets of Frisco town after a wild chase. The murder
victim a female MP who was doing her job checking out some suspicious activity
at the Officers’ Club. For that she got wasted and for that our man Sean will
go to the ends of the earth to find the killers.
The big
problem is why the killers were in the OC anyway, since apparently nothing was
taken, nothing that seemed to be out of place. That will be the puzzle both
Sean and Mark have to solve. Solved despite a serious disagreement about Mark’s
budding affair with Sean’s wayward daughter who has had the angst of every
military brat, civilian too come to think of it in trying to find her own
identity against that titanic father force. That Mark had problems with the old
man while he was an MP adds fuel to the fire.
In the end as
expected the case will be solved. As it turned out the deal going down was not
the drugs from Asia that I thought at first might be the reason the fort was
being used as a transit point to bring the stuff into the country but diamonds,
tons of them from the look of things. The cartel dragged down a few soldiers in
its wake including a decorated sergeant who got caught in the middle for some
problem he had over in Vietnam in the old days. Yeah, watch out bad guys when
one Sean Connery comes on the screen your days are numbered.
