Sum of All Fears (2002)
Rating (1 to 10) : 5
Summary: An adaptation of Clancy’s 5th technodrama novel. As with the three previous Tom Clancy movies, it falls short.
The movie has the same lead character from the other two Clancy-novel movies – Jack Ryan, an analyst for the CIA. Even though “Sum of All Fears” supposedly occurs after the previous three Clancy movies ( “The Hunt for Red October”, “Patriot Games”, “Clear and Present Danger”), Jack Ryan seems like he’s in a lesser role in the CIA than in the predecessors, which is illogical.
The movie starts with Jack being interrupted suddenly at home and summoned to work because the Russian president has died suddenly and has been replaced by Nemerov. Since Jack Ryan wrote an analysis paper on Nemerov predicting that he would be the next Russian president, the CIA Director of Intelligence Cabot (Morgan Freeman, Red in “The Shawshank Redemption”) summons him to attend a select Senate intelligence meeting. Advised by Cabot to keep quiet, he doesn’t say much but then makes a prediction to the Senators that seems wrong.
The CIA unearths evidence of missing Russian nuclear scientists and there are some vague clues about a nuclear bomb being made secretly in Russia, in violation of nuclear disarmament verification protocols. It looks suspicious and Ryan is assigned to investigate in the field, even though he is in Intelligence, not Operations. Finally, Ryan unearths a plot by neo-Nazis to detonate a nuclear bomb at the Super Bowl in the United States, frame the Russians for it, and provoke a nuclear exchange between the two nations that will destroy both. Not coincidently, the President of the US will be in attendance at the Super Bowl. It’s up to Ryan to prevent such a thing from occurring.
The movie suffers in many ways; I will say though that I have a jaundiced eye since I am a big fan of Clancy novels and have read the novel that this film is based on. First, Ben Affleck is miscast in the lead role as Jack Ryan; he doesn’t help the film except to bring in star power. He really doesn’t come off as a middle-aged CIA analyst caught unexpectedly in preventing a critical international crisis. The role of Ryan in this movie required Affleck to be part action-hero, part detective, and part persuasive policy analyst. He doesn’t shine in any one part and thus he doesn’t stick out in this movie. Since the first Clancy movie “The Hunt for Red October”, we’ve gone from Alec Baldwin to Harrison Ford to Ben Affleck, which is strange since it makes it look like Jack Ryan is getting younger as the Clancy movies continue in sequence. This story is supposed to have happened after the previous Clancy movies but in the previous movies Jack Ryan is married to Cathy Muller Ryan while in this one, he and his girlfriend Cathy Muller (Bridget Moynihan) are not. Yet, this logical flaw is excusable because perhaps the screenwriters and director were trying to place this movie independently of any timeline in the Clancy novels.
But there is another flaw that is bigger and just deflates the story. In the novel, the villains are Islamic fundamentalist terrorists while in the film the villains are neo-Nazis. This was done because liberal Hollywood did not wish to fan the flames of anti-Islamic feelings in America and elsewhere after 9/11 by having Arab Muslims vilified so immediately after such an event. Maybe this was understandable so as avoid making the movie seem propagandistic.
Whatever the reason, not having Arab Muslims be the villains indelibly changes the story. The movie doesn’t show the level of virulent hatred that the terrorists had against America and Western society in general. You just don’t get that level of irrational hatred from the neo-Nazis because no matter how much they might hate Western liberal democracies, their culture is the Western culture. And unlike the Arab Muslims in the novel, the neo-Nazis don’t portray a sense of fanaticism that would push them to suicidal acts.
Also lacking is the meticulous detail of the villains’ plans to start a nuclear war between the United States and Russia (back when the novel was written, the Soviet Union and the US were still in the nascent throes of Cold War rivalry). The movie skims over the machinations of the neo-Nazi villains, led by a shadowy right-wing European politician named Dressler (Alan Bates), as they conceive and implement their conspiracy. Perhaps I’m being too harsh here as it is very hard to present in cinematic form the inner thoughts and feelings of the characters of any novel but the script set the acting to be straightforward, without much implication.
While there are a fair number of good supporting actors and actresses (Bruce McGill, Morgan Freeman, Lee Garlington, Colm Feore), they don’t do enough to really make the movie interesting or compelling. This becomes a standard fare movie, something that could have been done without drawing from a Clancy novel. Let’s hope the next Clancy film, rumored to be “Without Remorse”, is better.
I might be a bit too critical of movies based on Clancy novels since I am an avid reader of them and none of them have measured up to level of the novels. However, by and of itself, “Sum of All Fears” is an average one. Ranked against the book, it falls much more.
Why you should or should not see this movie:
You might enjoy this movie if you have not read the novel or are a Clancy fan. It does have some suspense and drama. But even so, Affleck’s performance is lackluster and the movie swings from being a suspenseful spy thriller to a drama without any punch. I’d recommend the novel instead.
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