The Sum of All Fears

You sure get a lot of movie for your nine bucks in this adaptation of the Tom Clancy novel. Missiles, fighter jets, bombers, politics, Nazis, the hot line, spies, counterspies, the Mideast conflict, lots of different countries (and their associated subtitles), cell phones (tons of those), and a bona fide nuclear explosion on American soil, courtesy of terrorists (which doesn’t seem all that entertaining right about now). Your also get director Phil Alden Robinson (who directed the much better “Sneakers” in 1992) struggling for an hour to find his rhythm (not helped by the extremely annoying gimmick of introducing every new place with what looks like a satellite view of it; fortunately, he abandons this after a while). Robinson finally gets a grip on things, perhaps after realizing that movies made from Clancy novels (like the novels themselves), are all about precise technical details and not at all about the kinds of humans we keep running into here on earth (except for the president and his staff, who demonstrate far less composure under pressure than I generally like in my nation’s leaders). Ben Affleck plays a younger, fitter version of that everyman superhero Jack Ryan (previously portrayed by Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford), and perhaps the gentlest thing you can say is that he doesn’t embarrass himself.

Far eclipsing him is Morgan Freeman (as CIA Chief Bill Cabot), who would probably be fun to watch even if he were merely reading the want ads out loud, or silently, for that matter. At its heart, the movie as all about fantasy role playing at an almost distressingly adolescent level: you, too, can pal around with the head of the CIA, save the world (literally), and have a smart, beautiful girlfriend (Bridget Moynahan), and you don’t even have to be bitten by a genetically enhanced spider to do it. All you have to do is be bright, earnest, hardworking, and stick to your guns (oh yeah, it helps to be good looking, too). In fairness, there are worse messages a movie could send these days.

But there is a tediousness to Ryan’s relentlessly Boy Scoutish demeanor, not to mention his annoying habit of always being right about everything (it appears to be Clancy’s fondest fantasy to be proven the smartest boy in the class, surprising everyone who was fooled by his diffidence and humility). As an interesting contrast, check out Liev Schreiber as conflicted CIA “wet boy” John Clark. Now there’s an interesting character. Forget Jack Ryan; they ought to make a movie about John Clark. All of this galumphing about makes for reasonably diverting big-budget Hollywood entertainment. The bad guys get their comeuppance, and there is a happy ending, or at least as happy as one can expect after a low yield nuclear weapon levels much of Baltimore. But what about the gazillion people turned into nuclear toast by that blast? They’re probably not too happy. “The Sum of All Fears” doesn’t seem to pay much attention to consequences, but then, when you’re the smartest, handsomest boy in the class, maybe you don’t have to. (6/2/2002)