Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.0

The Presidio Blu-ray Movie Review

An Officer and a Cop (Who Isn't a Gentleman)

Reviewed by Michael Reuben August 10, 2013

The Presidio reunited director Peter Hyams and star Sean Connery after their successful pairing seven years earlier on Outland. Neither was the initial choice to make the original script by writer Larry Ferguson, who would shortly pen the effective adaptation of The Hunt for Red October. Lee Marvin was first cast as the spit-and-polish base commander, Col. Caldwell, but ill health forced him to drop out, and the project was put on hold. (Marvin died in 1987.) Tony Scott was attached as director but was eventually replaced by Hyams (whether by choice or involuntarily is unknown).

Meanwhile, an array of possibilities came and went to play the brash police detective who formerly served under the colonel. When Marvin was cast, Jeff Bridges was his co-star. After Bridges dropped out, Don Johnson and then Kevin Costner were slotted as replacements. (Connery was reported to be sorely disappointed when Costner did not take the part, as he was eager to reunite with his Untouchables colleague, having just won an Oscar for the film.) Eventually the role went to Mark Harmon, foreshadowing his later role in television's NCIS as a former military policeman now working in civilian law enforcement.

Meg Ryan played Caldwell's daughter, and her casting may be a vestige of Tony Scott's involvement, since he had just worked with Ryan in Top Gun . The Presidio was one of the last films Ryan made before When Harry Met Sally . . . initiated her typecasting as a rom-com poster girl. In The Presidio, she brings memorable flash to a role that would otherwise be functional and forgettable, and her performance is a reminder of what range Ryan could have shown, if her career had taken a different path.

The Presidio is a U.S. military base at the northwest tip of San Francisco. (Since the era depicted in the film, the base has been decommissioned and the land transferred to the National Park Service.) On a routine patrol, an M.P. named Patti Jean Lynch (Jenette Goldstein, a regular in James Cameron's films) interrupts a burglary at the officers' club and is gunned down. A high-speed chase ensues through the Presidio and beyond its boundaries into the city, claiming the lives of several S.F.P.D. officers. The burglars escape. What could possibly have been so valuable at the officers' club?

The case is assigned to Lt. Jay Austin (Harmon), presumably because he was formerly an M.P. at the Presidio and knows his way around the base. But Austin's familiarity comes with baggage. The M.P. who was shot, Patti Jean Lynch, used to be Austin's partner, and he left the Army after clashing with the base's Provost Marshall, Lt. Col. Alan Caldwell (Connery), over Austin's handling of the arrest of an officer on drunk driving charges. Austin thinks it more than a coincidence that the very same officer, Col. Paul Lawrence (Dana Gladstone), just happens to own a rare Russian gun of the same make used in the shooting at the officers' club. (Lawrence claims he lost the gun in a poker game.)

As if Austin and Caldwell didn't have enough to spar over, an additional element energizes them in the person of the colonel's daughter, Donna (Ryan). She was away at college when Austin served at the Presidio, and they meet for the first time when the cop knocks on Caldwell's front door to inquire about the investigation. With the quick-witted eye of someone who's had to learn to size up a lot of new people as her father moved her from one posting to another, Donna takes Austin's measure, flirts with him openly and has a dinner date by the time Austin leaves. The ensuing romance drives Caldwell to distraction, despite the sensible advice of his closest friend, Sgt. Maj. Ross Maclure (Jack Warden), who saved the colonel's life in Vietnam. Now retired, Maclure maintains a small war museum at the Presidio, where his Medal of Honor is one of the exhibits. He has known Donna all her life, and it's clear that he has served as the buffer between her and her father since Mrs. Caldwell died when Donna was two.

There isn't all that much plot in The Presidio. The criminal scheme is straightforward, and the bad guys practically wear signs around their necks announcing their guilt. Indeed, the burglary at the officers' club attracts so much attention to a previously unnoticed criminal enterprise that any crook smart enough to set up the scheme in the first place should also be smart enough to know when to shut down and vanish. But many of the film's best and most memorable sequences have little to do with its paper-thin crime plot. Hyams stages two memorable chases, one with cars in the opening and one on foot through Chinatown that recalls the multi-leveled pursuit through the miners' living quarters in Outland. Connery gets physical in a barroom brawl with a punk who makes the mistake of mocking his uniform. (He only uses a thumb: "My right thumb. The left one's much too powerful for you.") He also has a fine scene in which he tells a tour group of schoolchildren the story of his rescue by Maclure in Vietnam.

Ryan's performance as Donna crackles with enough energy to get past the functional dialogue and frequently soapy relationships. What passes between Donna and her father and Donna and Austin has almost no bearing on the nefarious activities being conducted on the base, which all seem to lead back to an oily businessman named Peale (Mark Blum). But the personal relationships wind up being more interesting, and by the end of the film you'd rather just hear about them.

The Presidio Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Paramount's first DVD of The Presidio in 1999 recycled an undistinguished laserdisc transfer into an even less distinguished, non-anamorphic DVD. In 2009, the company released a second DVD that is listed as anamorphic, but I have not seen it. In any case, this 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, released by Warner as part of its licensing arrangement with Paramount, sports a recent transfer of excellent quality. Director Hyams also served as cinematographer, but he had not yet embraced the stygian darkness that would characterize such later work as The Relic. Many of The Presidio's night scenes have a sheen and glow to them that give the film an old-fashioned Hollywood polish.

Warner/Paramount's Blu-ray image has been taken from pristine source material and features excellent detail, superior blacks, proper contrast levels and a finely differentiated color palette that gets the right shade of green for the Army uniforms but also picks up all the different shades that decorate Chinatown, as Austin pursues a fleeing suspect through and across it, and captures the bright red of Donna's sport car. The film's grain texture is fine but visible if you're looking for it, and there is no evidence of artificial sharpening or other untoward digital manipulation. With no extras and limited soundtrack options, the 97-minute feature compresses onto a BD-25 with an average bitrate of 23.95 Mbps, which is enough to handle the various chase and fight sequences without motion artifacts or compression-related anomalies.

The Presidio Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

According to IMDb, The Presidio received a 70-mm release with a 6-track sound mix, although the standard mix was Dolby Stereo Surround. Whatever source was used to create it, a 5.1 mix has appeared on all home video versions since Paramount's 1999 DVD, and that mix is presented here as lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1. Like most surround tracks from this era, the mix is generally front-oriented with the rear speakers used to create a general sense of ambiance, the effect of which is most pronounced in major action sequences like the opening auto pursuit and the elaborate shootout that occurs near the film's end. The track's dynamic range is quite good, so that sounds like gunfire and explosions register with force (though no one would use them to show off their new speakers or subwoofer). The dialogue is clear—a few added lines of dialogue explain why Connery's American colonel speaks with the accent of Scotland—and the score by Bruce Broughton (Silverado) is distinctive and memorable.

The Presidio Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Other than the theatrical trailer (480i; 1.78:1, enhanced; 2:45), the disc has no extras. Neither of Paramount's previous DVDs from 1999 or 2009 had extras.

The Presidio Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Presidio is by far the lesser of the two films that Hyams and Connery made together. It's an apt demonstration of the limits that a weak script imposes on otherwise superior craftsmanship, because the film's acting, cinematography, editing, production design, etc. have been assembled with care and professionalism. They just don't add up to much. Still, I remain fond of the The Presidio, because it reminds me of how San Francisco looked at a certain time, and because I always enjoyed driving through the area occupied by the Presidio, which was beautiful even before it became a national park. As a blind buy, I would not recommend the film, but if you're already a fan, the Blu-ray will not disappoint.