‘The Presidio’ (R)

Doubling duties as director and cinematographer, Peter Hyams seems to have tossed the former for the latter. "The Presidio," purported cop thriller, looks great. It is, in fact, less filling.

The maker of "Outland" and "2010" infuses a San Francisco setting with evocative misty grays, but screenwriter Larry Ferguson's dull doings hang thicker than smog. Half the movie is chatter: People introduce themselves and talk incessantly about their pasts, and explain other significant things You Should Know (but that don't help you anyway). The other half is pointless diversion.

Speaking of pointless, Mark Harmon (the walking, teaching surfboard of "Summer School") is a blunt instrument as police inspector Jay Austin , on the trail of a murder on a military compound. He's obliged to team with old enemy Lt. Col. Alan Caldwell (Sean Connery), who once thwarted former MP Austin from convicting a colonel. Now that the same colonel's under suspicion, Austin needs Caldwell's help. He also develops a strong affection for Caldwell's daughter Donna (Meg Ryan).

After an early formulaic acceleration -- a murder, an odd partnership forged -- "Presidio" loses all momentum. Harmon and Connery spend so much time nattering about the mystery, you wish they'd give you the case. And then suddenly Hyams is skimming the subsidiary Austin-Donna love affair, and Donna's relationship with her father, and Dad's relationship with old war buddy Ross Maclure (Jack Warden), and then flipping back to the mystery trail (which leads to a conspiracy among ex-CIA agents), and then back to the love affair, to daddy-daughter, to Maclure -- naargh!

Suffice it to say, "Presidio" ends with the kind of Magnum-Uzi reckoning and triumphant personal resolutions we're conditioned to expect. And Connery's participation in this misdirected project -- especially after the much more successful collaboration with Hyams in "Outland" -- is particularly hard to take.