History YMMV / ClearAndPresentDanger

** The scene where Smart Bomb blows up the cartel's hideout has not aged well since release, with the CGI bomb itself simply being pasted onto the footage in several shots.

** The ambush on the convoy that sees both Dan Murray and Emil Jacobs killed, along with countless other agents. Jack is the only man we see to emerge relatively unscathed, and is forced to return home with the bodies so many countrymen in tow as they are given full honors prior to burial.

* TheWoobie: Moira in the book, a widow who is used by Cortez and has a very deep ItsAllMyFault moment that almost drives her too suicide.

* CompleteMonster:

** In the movie version, [[FourEyesZeroSoul Robert "Bob" Ritter]], CIA Deputy Director of Operations, is the partner of National Security Advisor Admiral James Cutter who helps him run Operation RECIPROCITY. Ritter recruits John Clark to lead a team of soldiers in sabotaging Colombian drug cartels, resulting in several raids on drug facilities. When one of the attacks results in several innocent women and children being killed, Ritter brushes off Cutter's moral objections and pushes him to continue the operation. Ritter [[SmugSnake smugly]] informs hero Jack Ryan that due to Ritter's manipulations, Jack will receive all of the blame for RECIPROCITY if it's exposed while he and Cutter get presidential pardons. Later, Ritter and Cutter agree to sell out the soldiers in Colombia to Félix Cortez, leading to most of them being killed. When a livid [[AFatherToHisMen Clark]] demands to know what happened to the soldiers, Ritter and Cutter try to trick him into murdering Ryan.

* AntiClimax: One of the criticisms of the film was that the final confrontation with Cortez and rescuing the captured soldiers wasn’t nearly as exciting as the ambush scene midway through the film.

* MagnificentBastard: [[AntiHero John Clark]] is a C.I.A. operative recruited by National Security Advisor James Cutter and CIA Deputy Director of Operations Bob Ritter to carry out Operation RECIPROCITY against the Colombian drug cartels. Forming a small team of highly trained soldiers, Clark leads them in sabotaging the cartels’ operations while keeping their involvement secret, notably killing most of the leadership with a fake car bomb. Clark also helps Dr. Jack Ryan uncover a massive money-laundering scheme the cartels are involved in. Later Cutter and Ritter cut off communications between Clark and his men, resulting in them being captured or killed, and put the blame on Ryan to get Clark to murder him. Clark then kidnaps Ryan and [[MistreatmentInducedBetrayal tells Ritter that he’s killed Ryan]], realizing that he was lying when he doesn’t restore communications. Clark then teams up with Ryan and, along with a helicopter pilot Clark recruits and the one soldier that escaped, pulls off a four-man mission to rescue the captured soldiers from a heavily guarded base and [[AFatherToHisMen kill the man responsible for the death of his men]].
* MoralEventHorizon:

* SpiritualAdaptation: Interestingly, of all Tom Clancy novels, this is the one that got closest to being adapted with ''VideoGame/GhostReconWildlands.'' The premise is that the protagonists, American special forces soldiers led by a CIA agent, are sent in to destabilize TheCartel ruling Bolivia after the criminal organization attacks a US embassy. They use a lot of morally-questionable methods to strike back and achieve [[spoiler: very little since the cartel is replaced by foreign mercenaries almost immediately. The cartel also didn't actually attack the embassy.]]

** [[FourEyesZeroSoul Robert "Bob" Ritter]], CIA Deputy Director of Operations, is the partner of National Security Advisor Admiral James Cutter who helps him run Operation RECIPROCITY. Ritter recruits John Clark to lead a team of soldiers in sabotaging Colombian drug cartels, resulting in several raids on drug facilities. When one of the attacks results in several innocent women and children being killed, Ritter brushes off Cutter's moral objections and pushes him to continue the operation. Ritter [[SmugSnake smugly]] informs hero Jack Ryan that due to Ritter's manipulations, Jack will receive all of the blame for RECIPROCITY if it's exposed while he and Cutter get presidential pardons. Later, Ritter and Cutter agree to sell out the soldiers in Colombia to Félix Cortez, leading to most of them being killed. When a livid [[AFatherToHisMen Clark]] demands to know what happened to the soldiers, Ritter and Cutter try to trick him into murdering Ryan.

* SpecialEffectsFailure: During the ambush scene, a string carrying the rocket that strikes the second van in the convoy can be clearly seen if one looks hard enough.

* Clark is attacked by a grieving Chavez when he returns to find his men, with Chavez's raw screams of 'You left us! You left us!' filled with genuine anguish, as is the heartbroken look on Clark's face when he sees Chavez stumble out of the jungle.

* Clark is attached by a grieving Chavez when he returns to find his men, with Chavez's raw screams of 'You left us! You left us!' filled with genuine anguish.

* TearJerker: The death of Admiral Greer. And if that weren't enough, the scenes of his funeral service are interspersed with scenes of the ambushed American soldiers in Colombia being mowed down by the cartel.
** The ambush on the convoy that sees both Dan Murray and Emil Jacobs killed, along with countless other agents. Jack is the only man we see to emerge relatively unscathed, and is forced to return home with the bodies of his countrymen in tow as they are given full honors prior to burial.

* PunchClockVillain: Ritter has shades of this. He helps set up and manage the illegal Columbia operation, but makes it clear he doesn't like the president or Cutter and considers the operation to be their pet project and admits to Clark that it's for revenge and reelection. As a career intel official he's likely played this game for several administrations. He went along with selling out the Special Forces team and later Ryan to cover it up, but the idea originated with Cutter.

* SpiritualAdaptation: Interestingly, of all Tom Clancy novels, this is the one that got closest to being adapted with ''VideoGame/GhostReconWildlands.'' The premise is that the protagonists are sent in to destabilize a TheCartel overrun Bolivia after the criminal organization attacks a US embassy. They use a lot of morally-questionable methods to strike back and achieve [[spoiler: very little since the cartel is replaced by foreign mercenaries almost immediately. The cartel also didn't actually attack the embassy.]]

* TearJerker: The death of Admiral Greer. And if that weren't enough, the scenes of his funeral service and interspersed with scenes of the ambush on the American soldiers in Colombia being mowed down by the cartel.

* {{Narm}}: Inexplicably, there's a jar of candy on the President's desk that deflates the intensity of his early declaration of war on the cartels.

* WhatAnIdiot: Moira Wolfe for having told Cortez of Jacobs' departure, information with which Cortez correctly deduced that Jacobs was coming to Colombia and thus provided him a perfect opportunity to turn up the heat on Escobedo. To be fair, she couldn't have known he was an associate of Escobedo, but you would think that someone in the employ of the FBI would be cautious about not confiding such information about the goings-on of America's top law enforcement agency even in casual conversation. The result of this is her own death at Cortez's hands along with that of Jacobs and most of his entourage in Colombia, dramatically worsening the tensions in the region.

* Narm: Inexplicably, there's a jar of candy on the President's desk that deflates the intensity of his early declaration of war on the cartels.

MagnificentBastard: Cortez, Cortez, and again Cortez. The man [[spoiler:very nearly]] gets away with manipulating several drug cartels ''and'' the US forces sent to hunt them by playing them like a fiddle. He's no coward, either: his Crowning Moment of Magnificent Bastardry involves [[spoiler:''setting up an assassination attempt on himself'' and then manipulating the cartel into trusting him.]] Holy shit.
** In the film, Ritter gets his due. He insists on a signed letter beforehand knowing full well how these covert ops go bad to cover his own ass, and when Ryan confronts him with what he knows Ritter breaks out his literal "Get Out Of Jail Free" card and ''taunts'' him with it, knowing that while he is covered Ryan (who's been set up as the FallGuy) isn't.

* HarsherInHindsight: How much Clancy got right about the drug war in Colombia is borderline prescient. To start with, Operation CAPER involves intercepting cell-phone calls in order to gather actionable intelligence against the cartels; in the 80's to the early 90's, American ELINT-gathering units of the ISA, then known as Centra Spike, were crucial in dismantling the operations of the biggest cartel in Colombia at the time, the Medellin Cartel. Next, it is decided to make the laser-guided bomb strikes against significant cartel heads look like the actions of disaffected anti-government guerillas; in real-life, vengeful vigilante groups like Los Pepes began to lash out against the cartels as the body count from narcoterrorist acts began to rise. Then, Escobedo, an expy of the real-life Pablo Escobar, is brought down by the light infantry team headed by John Clark. The real-life Pablo Escobar was killed in a raid by a unit specially trained by US Special Forces advisors, with the very real evidence that those same advisors had taken part in those raids (it is speculated that Escobar was actually killed by a Delta Force sniper covering the Colombian assault team).
** A covert operation to make surgical bomb strikes on enemy High Value Targets that result in civilian casualties and political pressure on the current administration? Had Clancy written in that they were being [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror dropped by drones]], this would have been downright ''eerie''.

* RetroactiveRecognition: Donald Moffat had previously portrayed would-be President Lyndon B. Johnson in ''Film/TheRightStuff''.
** Tom Bower, who plays the drunken helicopter pilot, played the equally kooky but resourceful janitor from ''Film/DieHard2''.

* NoOneGetsLeftBehind: ultimately played straight.

* WhatTheHellHero: The US uses a ''lot'' of morally questionable and highly illegal methods to combat the drug trade, and some of the methods actually work. On a smaller scale, law enforcement agencies--the Coast Guard and an Alabama police department--use similarly extralegal tricks to bring about justice, and the climax features [[spoiler:Jack Ryan and the Pave Low crew disobeying orders to rescue the soldiers.]] Clancy notes that success doesn't justify the illegal nature of many of those actions.

* LiteralGenie: [[spoiler: Cortez confesses everything after he's captured in exchange for immunity from US prosecution, since trying to figure out which laws he broke would've involved a huge political mess. So in a [[HoistByHisOwnPetard gleefully ironic moment]], he's "repatriated" to the Cuban intelligence service that taught him all of his tricks and that he betrayed.]]
* MagnificentBastard: Cortez, Cortez, and again Cortez. The man [[spoiler:very nearly]] gets away with manipulating several drug cartels ''and'' the US forces sent to hunt them by playing them like a fiddle. He's no coward, either: his Crowning Moment of Magnificent Bastardry involves [[spoiler:''setting up an assassination attempt on himself'' and then manipulating the cartel into trusting him.]] Holy shit.

* MoralEventHorizon: Cutter and Ritter arguably crossed this when they authorized an operation in which several innocent children are caught in the crossfire and killed during an airstrike on the gathering cartel leaders. In the film, [[LackOfEmpathy Ritter expresses virtually no concern for the collateral damage being shown on TV]] while [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone Cutter is aghast at the scene]]. If not here, then definitely when they agreed to sacrifice their own soldiers in order to secure a tentative alliance with Cortez.

** A covert operation to make surgical bomb strikes on enemy High Value Targets that result in civilian casualties and political pressure on the current administration? Had Clancy written in that they were being [[TheWarOnTerror dropped by drones]], this would have been downright ''eerie''.

** The Smart Bomb sequence has not aged well since release, with the bomb itself simply being pasted onto the footage in several shots.

+* The Smart Bomb sequence has not aged well since release, with the bomb itself simply being pasted onto the footage in several shots.