A break-in at a military base leads to a murder; the perpetrators' escape causes the death of a cop outside the base, so the case will involve both the San Francisco P.D. and the military police. Former MP Jay Austin (Mark Harmon) is now a detective who will butt heads with his old commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Alan Caldwell (Sean Connery). They'll argue about methodology, and jurisdiction, and other such things, and Jay will naturally fall in lust with Caldwells' conveniently cute daughter Donna (Meg Ryan).

Although there are some good moments for the main actors - Jack Warden also among them, as Caldwells' longtime friend Ross Maclure - this movie is more entertaining during its murder investigation scenes. It IS played awfully straight, with not much in the way of humour, but then, this is more of a serious thriller than the typical buddy-cop action film. It does also have, however, a ridiculous scene that serves no real purpose to the plot other than to show how bad ass Connery is, as he beats up Rick Zumwalt (as a bully in a bar) with his THUMB. Slickly made, with capable direction by Peter Hyams, who again serves as as his own cinematographer (and does a better job of lighting the proceedings than usual). The location work in SF is excellent, fortunately.

The handsome Harmon is passable as our likable good guy protagonist, but he doesn't have much chemistry with either Connery or Ryan. The supporting cast is solid: Mark Blum, Marvin J. McIntyre, Dana Gladstone, the much too briefly seen Jenette Goldstein, Don Calfa (in a quick cameo), John DiSanti, Robert Lesser, Patrick Kilpatrick, etc., but Connery is the principal reason to watch "The Presidio". His effortlessly strong presence lends itself well to the role of a career military man.

This is easy enough to watch, but also easy enough to forget.

Six out of 10.

THE PRESIDIO is one in a surprising number of murder mysteries set at army bases; John Travolta and Jack Reacher have been involved in similar offerings. I mainly watched this due to being a big fan of Sean Connery and he doesn't disappoint, although the rest of the movie is strictly so-so. The hero of the hour is the wooden Mark Harmon, who comes across as sappy rather than likeable, and the film becomes extremely dull during his lengthy romantic sub-plot with Meg Ryan. The mystery and thriller aspects are better handled by old pro Peter Hyams, with two highlights in particular: the famous 'thumb' scene in the bar (Connery is a delight here) and a foot chase through San Francisco's Chinatown, which employs some wonderful camerawork.

The story is about the murder of an MP at the Presidio Army base in San Francisco. Because the killer left the base and tangled with SFPD cops, the case now is in both the jurisdiction of the police AND Army. But unfortunately, the cop assigned to the case (Mark Harmon) and the Colonel in charge of the military investigation (Sean Connery) hate each other and have a past. Can this odd couple manage to put aside their differences and solve the crime? And, can the Colonel's daughter manage to please BOTH of them?

Rarely have I disliked a trio of characters as much as I disliked the three leads in this film. I don't think it was the actors' faults, really...they just were delivering the lines as they were written. Sean Connery and Mark Harmon's characters were pretty one dimensional and they seemed to spend much of the movie doing lots of macho posturing...to the point where the film really lost me early on into the story. As for Meg Ryan who plays Connery's daughter...she also seemed about as unrealistic as the others and her car chase scene early in the story was cute...provided you didn't think at all about how ridiculous this was. Hopefully, the film gets better as NONE of these characters seemed like real people...more like caricatures.

So despite this, is the film worth seeing? Well, it's certainly NOT a film I'd rush to see and put it more in the category of a time-passer, at best. The reasons for not loving it are mentioned above, as the characters were bad and the film saddled with some occasionally horrid dialog.

By the way, some movies carry various warnings on the DVD cover. This one should have a warning about excessive macho posturing!