The Sum of All Fears (Special Collector's Edition)

I went into "The Sum of All Fears" expecting to be disappointed by Ben Affleck. I'm not really a fan of much of his dramatic work ("Changing Lanes" is an exception). I have not seen the other Jack Ryan movies, but I still didn't really think Affleck would make a credible CIA agent. So I was pleasantly surprised by his performance. It certainly isn't Oscar material, but he is very credible, which was more than I was expecting. The supporting cast is also quite good, especially the always impressive Morgan Freeman as Affleck's mentor and Ciaran Hinds as the Russian president. Speaking of the Russian president, I was impressed by the way the film portrayed him. Usually, foreign leaders in films are very one-dimensional. President Nemerov, however, is very well developed, with clear motivations for his actions. He is not the evil madman Hollywood commonly makes foreigners (especially Russians) out to be. In fact, he is arguably a better person than the film's American president. So I commend the writers for that. However, despite the acting and the good characters I did not really enjoy this film. Why? Because it's supposed to be suspenseful, and it's not. I know that Jack Ryan is trying to avert a major world crisis, but having him run around with a cell phone and type on computers does not generate much suspense. This is what a lot of the film, including the "climax" basically comes down to. The film is not deep enough to be a serious drama, so it needs the suspense and the action to deliver. Unfortunately, this does not happen. Although "The Sum of All Fears" does have some good qualities, it ultimately fails to deliver the basic needs of the genre, so I can't really recommend it. You could definitely do worse, but you could also do a lot better.

This is the worst transfer I've encountered. It's like something from Paramount's garbage bin that accidentally got made into BD. Noise galore from start to finish. Best avoid this BD. Hope Paramount will follow Sony's example and recall this title...

Action thriller set in 2002 in which a neo-Nazi terrorist group gets hold of a small Israeli nuclear bomb that went missing during the Arab-Israeli war of 1973 and uses it to try and trick America and Russia into nuclear war with each other, and the efforts of a CIA analyst played by Ben Affleck to prevent this nightmare scenario from happening. Not a bad thriller, with one particularly horrifying moment on which the whole film hinges, but it must be said I have seen films with `preventing World War Three' plots that had greater urgency (e.g. Crimson Tide starring Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman). Still, worth a look.

I've had this DVD on the shelf for a few years but never watched it. And the book is one of Tom Clancy's I'd never read. Having the three other DVDs of Clancy's books I kinda knew what to expect. But the movie was a pleasant surprise in its realism of just what a small detonatioin could do. And the subject is still a valid one today, what one deranged group with one device could achieve.

I noticed Tom Clancy was the producer, so he must have had some input to this movie. I have trouble with Ben Afflect playing Jack Ryan, but then I have never liked any of the actors that have filled that role. Don't ask me who could do it, but none of these actors would have been my choice.

For this movie the special effects steal the show, and one of the problems with putting a Tom Clancy on the screen was pointed out not only by some reviews here, but in the special features on the disc: the books are sprawling epics too large to be reduced to the screen. I doubt any other books will ever be filmed, unless Mr. Clancy becomes less "James Michener" like and reduces the number of pages in his books.

Overall, the film was both more and less than expected. More enjoyable and less pandering to what a fallout attack would bring. All in all for an action adventure film it does the job.

Semper Fi.

Even in this new era of Russian and American friendship
into which this film came, there are still atomic bombs on both sides.
Technically the handling of people in the bomb area in this film is very wrong : at the hospital and on the streets.
Everyone is taught that the ashes from the bomb are as deadly as the bomb itself. No one was doing decontaminations here.
The brinkmanship here was classic and the Jack Ryan as good as ever.
Tom Clancy is a very good spy/ suspense writer, he just doesn't seem to know that much about atomic bombs.