I watched this the other night, and can't believe how politically correct it is. The bad guys are Austrians, Isrealis, and, indirectly, the U.S. military-industrial complex. I wonder what Tom Clancy thinks about that. Muslims are just innocent bystanders, and the liberals save the day, because war is all just a misunderstanding, or is caused by European nazis. This movie is shameless political correctness. The film is actually excellent, but I give it only two stars for the tired leftwing cliches. If they had filmed it based on Clancy's novel, it would have been great. I think Hollywood just copped out and got scared of portraying the Muslims as "the enemy", and so did what they always do: just turn the bad guys into white nazis. South Africans are no longer available, so they went to the "default": Austrians (guys, World War II is over). The Sum of All Fears (Special Collector's Edition)
Deeply compromised adaptation of the Tom Clancy potboiler. Director Phil Alden Robinson and his cadre of screenwriters tippy-toe around, about, but never directly on, the subject of mass murder by terrorists. The immediate point of comparison to 9/11 in this film would be the small nuclear bomb that presumably obliterates the city of Baltimore, MD. I say "presumably" because we're of course not permitted to see the results of the devastation: Robinson & Co., by the use of very heavy editing, attempt to spare us from associating their fictional event to the real event that occurred a year ago. (Well, some windows are blown out, and a small, rather pretty computer-animated mushroom cloud is perceived for a split-second, indicating the city may not be completely wiped-out, after all.) Indeed, by film's end, it's as if the blast never occurred: in the last scene, Ben Affleck and his pretty wife are having lunch in the park. The End. One wonders why the film studio simply didn't scrap this whole project and eat the loss, if they were so fearful of the movie's subject-matter. Why go to the trouble of making a movie about a catastrophic event if you're not even going to play that event for dramatic value? Of course, the supreme irony is that the fearful filmmakers, who shot this movie before 9/11, changed the Muslim villains of Clancy's story to a cabal of Neo-Nazis, in order to avoid accusations of insensitivity from the Arab-American community. (If what I've heard is true. I've never read the book, myself. If the book doesn't feature Arab terrorists, I stand humbly corrected.) I give *The Sum of All Fears* a 2nd star primarily for the excellent supporting actors (Morgan Freeman, a delightfully smooth Liev Schreiber, James Cromwell, Philip Baker Hall, et al.), and for the overall professionalism of the direction . . . by which I mean that even if the story is implausible, the action sequences are not. However, Ben Affleck, filling the shoes of Harrison Ford as CIA agent Jack Ryan, is a massive liability. Not only is he a skunk at a garden party, in terms of comparison with the rest of the cast, but he makes one appreciate just how good his predecessor in the role really was.
. . .actually approved of what was done to his outstanding book. The changing of the "bad guys" from Islamic extremists to Neo-Nazis was unbelievable, and detracted from the message of the story to such a degree as to make the film, in the mind of this reviewer, not worth much at all.Call me a purist, but I really dislike this sort of revisionism.Read the book; give the movie a miss.
The challenge facing any screenwriter attempting to adapt a Clancy novel is what to cut from the massive tome to fit the two-hour film run-time limit that theater owners so desperately covet.
For instance, the huge scope of "Red October" was cut to the bone, but just deftly enough to be a decent film. The plots of the other two (Clancy books made into films) actually lent themselves well to film adaptation.
Also, in light of 9/11, a case could be made that "Sum" is Clancy's most terrifying and realistic novel, so great care should have been exercised in bringing this to the screen.
The cinematic result, however, is so hackneyed, so utterly ludicrous, that what was supposed to be high drama and suspense delivers nothing to the devoted Clancy fan but utter disappointment.
The film's first problem is the casting of Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan. Clancy's Jack Ryan is a CIA analyst, an intellectual who is always forced into reluctant action by circumstance.
Affleck's portrayal of Ryan is nothing but the same wide-eyed, slack-jawed, one-note performance that he has phoned-in on every film he's ever done. Wherever he delivers any line concerning analysis of data, people or scenarios, Affleck is totally unbelievable as Ryan.
At least Alec Baldwin, and especially Harrison Ford, correctly nailed the nuances of Ryan's character. But those guys are actors WITH chops, something Affleck is totally devoid of, and boy, is it obvious and ugly to watch.
The second problem is the concession (to the Islamic community in this country) that the producers made of shifting the book's main protagonists from Islamic terrorists to Neo-Nazis. In one scene, the Nazi Big Cheese (the always wonderful, but here, totally wasted Alan Bates) reflects that Hitler was stupid for taking on the Russians and Americans instead of getting them to destroy each other. He plans to do just this by detonating a nuclear bomb on U.S. soil, and an associated rogue military act, to goad the two countries to full nuclear war and then rule the world afterward.
In the book, the full-scale nuclear exchange scenario was not the design of the Islamic protagonist, but rather a horrifying extension of external circumstance surrounding the detonation of a terrorist's single atomic bomb. The film's revised premise is a terrible compromise that just makes no sense whatsoever: There wouldn't be much left to take over after a full nuke exchange between the U.S. and Russia.
The film's biggest problem, however, is the script, which heaps contrivance upon contrivance, going from bad to worse as the film progresses.
Examples: There is a jarring instant geographical shift of Ryan from the U.S. to a covert mission deep inside Russia with no explanation of how he got there; Ryan in downtown post-nuclear explosion Baltimore, clad in nothing but a sweater, with no apparent radiation/fallout after-effects; Ryan using the crashed helicopter radio that still functions after being EMP'd by the nuclear detonation (didn't the screenwriters do ANY research on the subject at all, or at least watch a "Broken Arrow" DVD?); Ryan utilizing his mentor's PDA (also exposed to the EMP but also still miraculously functioning) to communicate with the CIA's deepest mole inside the Kremlin (anybody at the CIA have a security problem with one of their own having a direct communication link to their highest level Russian source???!!!).
And here's one for you: Ryan is running thru post-blast downtown Baltimore because he's chasing the bad guys who installed the bomb: Why would those guys still be in Baltimore? To hang out and roast radioactive weenies? No, it's because the screenwriters needed to set up a ridiculous fight scene with the personal bodyguard of the Nazi Big Cheese, who A.) had never been shown in the U.S. prior to this scene, and more importantly B.), WHY WOULD HE BE THERE WHEN HE KNOWS THE BOMB IS GOING TO DETONATE??!!
And just when you think it's over, just when you thought it couldn't get any more ludicrous, the final scene is so silly that the writers should be locked up and never allowed near a Powerbook ever again.
The wonderful supporting cast are the only redeeming thing this vapid clunker has to offer (once again, the magnificent Morgan Freeman rises above terrible material).
Clancy himself is listed as exec producer of this croaker. Maybe not having enough cash to buy the Minnesota Vikings a few years ago was such a blow to his ego that he's willing to compromise the book he fashioned with such wondrous detail and imagination, just for the almighty buck.
Geez, Tom, your fans, and especially Jack Ryan, deserve a WHOLE lot better. - Morgan Freeman - Ben Affleck - Action - Jack Ryan'
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