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In Clancy's novel, the terrorists were from an Arab country, but screenwriter Paul Attanasio -- a former film critic for the Washington Post -- has made them neo-Nazis. Their leader is an Austrian billionaire businessman Richard Dressler (Alan Bates) with ties to British, Russian and Arab mercenaries. Dressler puts his plan into action when one of his operatives is offered an Israeli nuclear warhead lost in the desert in 1967 during The Six Day War. It's up to CIA agent Jack Ryan to prevent the mass destruction of a Third World War. This is the fourth Jack Ryan movie and Ben Affleck is the third actor to portray him. Alec Baldwin was the original screen Ryan in The Hunt for Red October with Harrison Ford taking over duties for Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. To prevent confusion, viewers are best to forget the first three films because Ryan has gotten much younger and greener. Instead of the seasoned operative he became with Ford, Jack Ryan is now a young former Marine and brilliant historian working at a low-level desk job. Ryan becomes valuable to the CIA when it is discovered he is an expert on Russia's new leader, President Nemerov (Ciaran Hinds). Ryan quickly becomes an aide to CIA director Bill Cabot (Morgan Freeman), who becomes both mentor and father figure for the eager young idealist. Attanasio and director Phil Alden Robinson get a great deal of comic mileage out of the early relationship of Cabot and Ryan. It's a stroke of genius to keep up the lightness of the movie until the bomb arrives in America because it serves to heighten the tension when it finally kicks in. Ryan is no James Bond. He's a reluctant hero who gets paired with John Clark (Liev Schreiber), a true superspy. It's seeing Clark in action that shows Ryan how to take control of matters when world peace literally hangs in the balance. The Sum of All Fears is a dense political thriller that is as much about political chess games as it is about adventure and action, though there is no shortage of those. One almost needs a score card to keep track of who is working for whom and who the double and triple agents are. Freeman brings a great deal of humanity to Cabot without ever undermining the man's intelligence, insight and authority. Affleck uses his natural, easy charm to great advantage. The Sum of All Fears is compelling filmmaking at its best. It takes the viewer into a world of espionage and terror that --given today's incendiary global climate -- is all too real. (More on Sum Of All Fears)
(This film is rated AA)
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