NCIS star Mark Harmon embarked on a feature film career with the 1987 comedy film Summer School, which was a modest box-office success and served as an effective showcase for the 1980s charm and handsomeness that led Harmon to be named People’s second-ever Sexiest Man Alive in 1986. Following Summer School, he starred alongside Sean Connery in the 1988 crime film The Presidio, in which he plays a former military cop turned San Francisco police detective who investigates a murder committed at the titular Army base.
However, despite the incomparable presence of Connery, whose role in The Presidio was immediately preceded by Connery’s Academy Award-winning performance in the 1987 crime film The Untouchables, The Presidio was a commercial and critical failure, which dealt a severe blow to Harmon’s feature-film aspirations. Indeed, while The Presidio became a virtually forgotten footnote in Connery’s legendary career, the failure of The Presidio heralded Harmon’s imminent return to television, where he subsequently toiled for more than a decade until his historic run on the military police procedural television series NCIS in 2003, the year Connery retired from acting.
Mark Harmon and Sean Connery Follow the Buddy-Cop Formula in ‘The Presidio’
The Presidio is a fast-paced, sleek thriller that’s nonetheless comprised virtually entirely of familiar elements from previous films. This is evident in the film’s opening scene, which features a technically and visually impressive car chase on the streets of San Francisco that’s instantly reminiscent of Steve McQueen’s classic car-chase scene in the great 1968 cop thriller film Bullitt.
However, the derivative nature of The Presidio is most clearly visible with Mark Harmon and Sean Connery’s characters, whose relationship fulfills all the requirements of the buddy-cop formula without bringing anything exciting and new to this well-worn dynamic. Like Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte’s mismatched partners in the seminal 1982 buddy-cop film 48 Hrs., Harmon’s character, San Francisco police detective Jay Austin, and Connery’s Lieutenant Colonel Alan Caldwell, don’t like each other when they’re forced to collectively solve a murder that’s been committed at the Presidio Army base.
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Austin is a former military cop who served at the Presidio base under Caldwell’s command until a falling out between them over Caldwell’s perceived betrayal of Austin, which led Austin to leave the Army and join the San Francisco police department. In addition to his personal history with Caldwell, Austin is emotionally invested in the murder investigation, as the victim, a female military police soldier, was Austin’s former partner on the base.
Meg Ryan plays Caldwell’s free-spirited daughter, Donna, whose primary purpose in the film is to become romantically involved with Austin, thus complicating Austin and Caldwell’s already antagonistic relationship, which, of course, eventually thaws, as Austin and Caldwell develop grudging respect for each other in the course of their relatively straightforward and uninteresting murder investigation.
‘The Presidio’ Is a Precursor to ‘NCIS’
Mark Harmon’s adequate though unremarkable performance in The Presidio is most notable for providing a telling glimpse of his triumphant later career, specifically Harmon’s iconic portrayal of Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs on the television series NCIS over the course of 19 seasons. When The Presidio was released theatrically in June 1988, Harmon was 36, approximately the same age as the younger version of Gibbs in the debut episode of the NCIS prequel series NCIS: Origins.
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Like the younger Gibbs in NCIS: Origins, Harmon’s character in The Presidio, Jay Austin, is haunted by a past event, in terms of the circumstances behind Austin’s decision to leave the military and become a San Francisco police detective. Moreover, the episodic plot of The Presidio, which revolves around a diamond smuggling operation involving the military, features a mystery that Gibbs and his team could have handily solved during a routine episode of NCIS.
Harmon Is a Television Superstar Who Lacks Big-Screen Charisma
Prior to The Presidio, Mark Harmon had well established himself as a compelling actor on television, as seen with his chilling performance as real-life serial killer Ted Bundy in the 1986 television miniseries The Deliberate Stranger. However, he looks and seems curiously bland in The Presidio, in which his laid-back performance is overshadowed by Sean Connery’s effortlessly forceful presence, as well as Meg Ryan’s high-voltage performance as Harmon’s character’s love interest.
While Connery and Ryan emerged from The Presidio virtually unscathed, much of the blame for the commercial and critical failure of The Presidio, which grossed just over $20 million at the domestic box office, was attributed to Harmon, who was judged to be the film’s weakest link. This sentiment was echoed by critic Roger Ebert in his one-a-half-star review of The Presidio. Ebert wrote:
“Connery has a few good moments, largely created by his own energy and effort, as when he uses his perfect timing to give ordinary dialogue the feeling of humorous understatement. Harmon seems to lack charisma. On the basis of this film, he is not an interesting actor.”
You can rent The Presidio on Apple TV and Prime Video or watch Harmon in NCIS, which is streaming on Paramount+.
