Don’t Know Much About History

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It’s no secret who one of my favorite popcorn munching, thrill seeking, Saturday afternoon movie actors is. However, like most actors worth their salt, Harrison Ford does have a repetoire that extends far beyond two of the most successful film franchises in movie history and as I have been mentioning in probably half of my posts, he will be returning to the silver screen as a certain globe-trotting, snake fearing, bullwhip cracking, Nazi despising archaeologist. Below is a List of some of my other Ford favorites.

Witness: His first and (so far) only Academy Award nomination and it features a very cool song from days gone by.

The Fugitive: The best motion picture based on a television series.  Tommy Lee Jones’ Best Supporting Oscar winning film.  Excellent cat-and-mouse chase of the on the lam doctor and the obsessed federal marshal tracking him down. Also believed to be based on the actual case of  Cleveland, OH physician Sam Sheppard.

What Lies Beneath: Hitchcockian in its suspense without the blood and gore.

The Jack Ryan duology (Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger). Alec Baldwin started the franchise in The Hunt for Red October and Ben Affleck concluded it in The Sum of All Fears.  I know it is another series but Harrison’s two films are the best.

Air Force One: Flawed, cliched, but seriously, would it be so bad if he were our president?  Another good popcorn film.

I know I am forgetting a lot so please feel free to comment on some of your favorite Harrison Ford movies.  Any will do.

11 thoughts on “Don’t Know Much About History”

  1. Besides Indy, Star Wars IV-VI of course. I never did get to see that special episode of Deal or No Deal. It seems there is no regular poster of that show to the newsgroups. Someone did post the April 30 show of course, just to frustrate me.

  2. Dang- hit submit just as I thought of something else. I wonder how successful the Indy franchise would have been had Tom Selleck not been under contract to do Magnum PI? Ford got the role only after Magnum PI producers refused to let Selleck out of his contract. A similar thing happened with Pierce Brosnan when the Remington Steele producers wouldn’t let him out of his contract to be the new Bond after Roger Moore. Then those same producers canceled the show after that season. Of course as we all know he got to play Bond anyway several years later.

  3. I guess we will never know what Indy would have been. It definitely would not have been the same role. On the Bond note, I think Brosnan came in at the right time. Living Daylights was good but I thought License to Kill was just too serious.

  4. How about American Graffiti or Presumed Innocent? The first a classic (and the one that actually got him into the Star Wars Gig), the second a rather interesting murder mystery that has a weird twist or two.

  5. YES… American Graffiti in which audiences were really introduced audiences to a genius or the king of money grubbers: George Lucas. Who is now apparently trying to milk all the money he can out of his second huge franchise by re-releasing the Indy DVDs with new “special features” but still no audio commentary by the casts.

  6. (What A)Wonderful World :Don’t Know much About History/Don’t Know Much Biology, etc… Sam Cooke 50s-60s song although it has been covered

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