The Indiana Jones franchise is coming to an end. What underrated Harrison Ford movies can you watch to help you say goodbye?
We all know Harrison Ford as a big movie star now, but he only had a handful of credits when George Lucas decided to cast him as Han Solo. After that, nothing would be the same. Suddenly, he was in one of the world’s biggest movies. He would go on to have a very storied career and play some of the biggest icons on the big screen. With Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny, he is putting one of his most enduring characters to rest. Now, it’s time to go back and look at his filmography and seek out some of the most underrated Harrison Ford movies.
Ford plays Russian Submarine Captain Alexei Vostrikov in the true story of the K-19 Russian submarine. During the 60s Cold War, Russia hurries to compete with the United States’ nuclear submarine capabilities. They hastily put together their own nuclear submarine and, on its first voyage, find that it is not seaworthy. The nuclear reactor begins to overheat, and the crew has to figure out a way to cool it down to prevent an international incident.
Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer star in this thriller as a married couple that is recent empty nesters. The wife had been in an accident the year before, and now the daughter has left for college. Now she is beginning to hear voices and see strange things around their house. Her husband starts to worry that the car accident has been worse for her than they realized. Soon she begins to suspect that someone around her has covered up a dark secret. The film that Robert Zemeckis made in the middle of Cast Away so Tom Hanks could have time to lose all the weight he needed for the later scenes. A creepy underrated Harrison Ford movie.
42 (2013)
Based on the true story of Jackie Robinson and how he changed the game of baseball forever. Harrison Ford plays the owner of the Dodgers Branch Rickey. He wants to recruit an African American baseball player to play in the major leagues. He informs Jackie (played by the always excellent Chadwick Boseman) that he will face unrivaled levels of racism but must maintain his composure. The film shows the struggles he faced in the game and how it changed acceptance outside of the game of baseball. A great movie with a fantastic message.
A young secretary, played by Melanie Griffith, tells her boss of a great business idea but is told it’s terrible. When her boss breaks her leg in a skiing accident, she discovers that her boss is about to move ahead with her idea and claim it as her own. With her boss out of commission, she takes over the role and moves ahead with the merger on her own. Along the way, she meets Jack Trainer (Ford), who she falls in love with. Everything culminates with her boss returning on the day of the merger and accuses her of stealing the idea. The movie is a lot of fun, and at the time, it was interesting to see Ford in a different role than we had been used to.
Before he ended up in one of the biggest movies of all time, Ford would play some great supporting parts like he does here in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation. Gene Hackman stars as an expert sound engineer hired by a corporate boss to spy on a woman. He does the job as hired but has a strict set of rules he goes by. He begins to spin out of control once he slightly deviates from those rules. Ford plays a Corporate Man who tries to get Hackman to give him the results he found. Hackman refuses, and a cat-and-mouse situation ensues. A great slow-burn film.
Here, Ford gets to play grumpy news reporter Mike Pomery. Which, really, Ford has become the epitome of a grumpy old man and really gets to sink into here in this film. Becky, played by Rachel, McAdams, is hired on as a producer of a failing TV morning show. She begins to shake things up by changing hosts, but learns the show will be canceled within six weeks if ratings don’t improve. Nothing seems to work while she does all she can to improve ratings. Some great performances that are worth checking out.
A young Amish boy witnesses the murder of an undercover cop. Detective John Book (Ford) is tasked with keeping the boy and his mother safe. When he finds out that his own life is in danger, he goes with them back to their community. There he tries to blend in with the Amish community while keeping the boy safe. Soon, the men after him find out his location. Book is worried as the community believes in non-violence, so it will be up to him to protect himself and everyone else. The movie is something of a masterpiece, with beautiful direction from Peter Weir.
A doctor (Ford) is at a medical convention in Paris. While he takes a shower, his wife mysteriously disappears out of their hotel room. He searches for her in the hotel but finds she may have been taken by force. The police and French government offer no help, so he has to begin searching for her on his own. He teams up with a young woman who is a drug dealer and might have ties to why his wife was kidnapped. As they plunge through the Paris underground, he realizes this situation goes much further than he could have imagined. This is one of director Roman Polanski’s most accessible films.
Ford plays a Prosecutor that finds a woman he had an affair with has been murdered. As he starts looking into her death, he finds that the evidence left behind begins to point to him as the murderer. When he becomes the number one suspect, he must find out who killed her. Soon he uncovers a string of blackmail and motives for numerous people to be her murderer. It’s always fun to see Ford as a man backed into a corner and looking for the truth. This is actually being remade as an Apple TV series with Jake Gyllenhaal.
Allie Fox is a genius inventor and decides that modern living has ruined civilization. He uproots his family and takes them down to the jungles of Central America to live. Here he plans to build a utopia for himself and his family. They will build their lives from the ground up. Soon, their attempts are thwarted when rebels that the ensuing battle has ruined the area. Allie will not give up and plans to keep building a Utopia in the jungle. This re-teams him with his Witness director, Peter Weir. The film had mixed reviews but has been re-evaluated over the past few years. Ford’s performance as Allie is the highlight of the film, although River Phoenix, who would play young Indiana Jones in Last Crusade is excellent as his son. It also teamed him with Helen Mirren decades before Taylor Sheridan’s 1923.
What do you think are the best underrated Harrison Ford movies? Let us know in the comments.