Supporting Victims: Tom Crowley, Joel Fuernsinn, Erik Lystad, Christie Hunt, Melody Hunt
The Sum of All Fears is
the latest cinematic adaptation of a Tom Clancy "Jack Ryan" book. In
the Jack Ryan universe, Jack Ryan is a former Marine, former history professor,
turned CIA analyst then director then Vice-President, then President. He
represents a kind of Everyman made good through hard work and he's Tom Clancy's
political mouthpiece on a variety of issues. In the movie world, Jack Ryan is a
franchise with interchangeable actors. Initially, the character was played by
Alec Baldwin in the very excellent Hunt for Red
October, the best of all the
Clancy movies to date, in my humble opinion. He was then played by Harrison Ford
in two movies - Patriot Games and
Clear and Present Danger. Now the character is
being played by Ben Affleck.
In this chapter of Jack Ryan, the universe has been rewritten slightly to
accommodate Affleck who's much younger in the timeline than Ryan is in the book.
In the movie, Ryan is not yet a part of the intelligence community. He's dating
but not yet married to Dr. Cathy Muller (Bridget Moynahan). He's recruited by
the Director of Central Intelligence played by William Cabot when the Russian
president dies unexpectedly and is replaced by Neremov (Ciaran Hinds). Ryan had
done an extensive analysis of Neremov and now finds himself advising Cabot, and
indirectly, the President (James Cromwell). In the meantime, a sinister
organization from the past is working to bring about a war between Russia and
the United States and Ryan finds himself racing around the world to gather the
information that he needs to stop events from bringing about the end of
civilization.
Tom Clancy has two strengths as a writer: his extensive technical knowledge of
the inner workings of the military and intelligence communities and his ability
to create a novel and plausible crisis based on the current events of our times.
The books are interesting to read in the same way that the early years of ER
were interesting to watch - filled with lots of jargon, technical explanations,
and situation analysis. Unfortunately, this complexity is difficult to bring to
screen, partly due to the dumbing down of the story that happens during the
writing process and also because of time limitations. Historically, the quality
of the Clancy movies has been rather uneven. The Hunt for Red October was
excellent. Patriot Games was not so bad. Clear and Present Danger was terrible.
It's unfortunate that Alec Baldwin wasn't kept on in the Jack Ryan role because
he seemed to have a better sense of the character than Harrison Ford. The Sum of
All Fears is a good Clancy movie and Affleck does a good job of playing the
intellectual action hero. The movie keeps enough technical information in the
dialogue to give us a sense that the characters are competent. It blurs the
details when they interfere with the flow of the story. The characters are all
ably acted. All in all, The Sum of All Fears is a very entertaining picture. My
only problem with it is it didn't seem to have the impact for me that it would
have if I'd watched it in the 80s or even the early 90's - when Clancy first
published the book. I'm not naive enough to believe that relations between the
United States and Russia are good enough to prevent a situation where we'd be
hovering on the brink of a nuclear war. But I'm also not having nightmares about
it either. It's simply not the scariest world-ending thing on the block for me
these days - which suggests something either about the state of the world or
what I'm really afraid of these days. On the other hand, the secondary events in
the movie have a very good probability of occurring and should have been
emphasized to increase the 'reality-driven tension'. Ironically, if the
producers had stuck to the original villains in the book, some Iraq-funded
Islamic radicals, rather than resorting to the bland and politically-correct
villainous stand-bys, it might have been just a teensy bit scarier in light of
recent events.
I give The Sum of All Fears a 7 out of 10 on the Good Movie Scale and a 3 out of
10 on the Bad Movie Scale for some bits of technical silliness. It's good solid
fare if you're looking for a way to be entertained some weekend.
