A third actor stepped into the shoes of Jack Ryan with the intended reboot of the franchise in "The Sum of All Fears." With Ben Affleck taking the role previously filled by Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford, the series had hoped a younger and bankable-at-the-time actor would make the Tom Clancy character another tent pole for the studio. However, the film strayed heavily from the Clancy novel of the same name and while the film did respectable business, Affleck´s star would fall heavily after starring in films "Gigli," "Jersey Girl" and "Surviving Christmas" after his first turn as Jack Ryan. Whereas "The Sum of All Fears" was hoped to be for the Jack Ryan franchise what "Batman Begins" did a couple years later for Bruce Wayne, this would be the first and only time with Affleck as Ryan and the last film to date featuring the character of Jack Ryan.
"The Sum of All Fears" begins with a few scenes that depict a lost nuclear warhead during the 1973 Yom Kippur War that was onboard an Israeli A-4 Skyhawk which was shot down from anti-aircraft fire. The film fast forwards to the year the film was released, 2002. Here it is discovered that a Nazi sympathist named Dressler (Alan Bates) has purchased a nuclear warhead from an arms dealer named Olson (Colm Feore). The bomb is purchased for $400 by Olson and sold to Dressler for $50 million. The bomb´s atomic material is then shipped to the Ukraine where three Russian scientists have been hired to build a nuclear bomb. The intention of the nuclear bomb is to ship it to America and for Dressler to pit the two superpowers against each other in nuclear war.
Jack Ryan´s (Ben Affleck) role in this film is a reboot which finds him as a Junior CIA Analyst on the ´Russian Desk´ where he catches the attention of CIA Director William Cabot (Morgan Freeman) because he had written a lengthy report on Alexander Nemerov (Ciaran Hinds). Nemerov becomes the Russian president after the failing health of the previous president forces him to succumb and it is unknown whether or not Nemerov is a hard-liner and a potential force to be reckoned with. President Fowler (James Cromwell) and his advisors ask Ryan and Cabot to travel to Russia and meet with Nemerov and get a feeling for the new Russian president. After the meeting, Russian attacks Chechnya and it looks as if Nemerov is indeed a hardliner, although Ryan has stated he strongly feels otherwise.
While all of this political posturing and intelligence gathering is going on, a little bit of Ryan´s social life is revealed. Unlike the previous three films which portrayed Ryan as a married family man, "The Sum of All Fears" pretends to be a prequel of sorts and Ryan is still dating Dr. Cathy Muller (Bridget Moynahan). He has told the doctor that he is a historian, but reveals the truth when he is sent to Russian by Cabot. However, after operative John Clark (Liev Schreiber) is sent to Russia to track down the three missing scientists, Ryan is able to take Cathy to a White House dinner and his true profession becomes known to Cathy.
For one moment during the film Ryan stops being an analyst and moves away from pushing a pencil to carrying a gun. He is asked to join Clark in Russian and relay some new intelligence to the field operative. The Jack Ryan franchise has been heavily driven by action and both Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford has flexed their Hollywood muscle to help propel the Ryan character through some nicely handled action sequences. Affleck is almost given a pass from taking part in the action through the entire first half of the film and after a comical exchange with Schreiber, he cocks a pistol and teases the audience that some action may ensue.
The film drags on for the first hour or so as the plot builds up to a climactic nuclear explosion in Baltimore at the halftime mark of the film. "The Sum of All Fears" finally becomes a little exciting during the tense moments after the bomb explosion where a few key members of the cast are either killed or wounded. The post-explosion half of the film finds Ryan trying desperately to convey information to President Fowler about the nuclear explosion and convince him that Nemerov and the Russians are not behind the explosion and hopefully avert an escalation of events that seems ready to birth World War III. Of course, it is a Jack Ryan film and he finds a way to inject a combination of action and intelligence to save the day.
The large nuclear explosion comes fully equipped with a few nice special effects sequences that amps up the excitement of the film for about three minutes. There are some helicopter crashes, cars flipped over by the explosion and lots of dust. A few windows blow out and you definitely get the sense that something has blown up, although there were no buildings shown exploding. "The Sum of All Fears" arrived in theaters just after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and I would tend to believe that the big explosion sequence was neutered to satisfy audience sensibilities at the time. One could also believe that the film´s less-than-expected box office returns were due to the subject nature of a large terrorist attack on an American city.
With Ben Affleck, Tom Clancy finally got an actor the age and physique he had intended Ryan to be during the earlier novels featuring the Jack Ryan character. Unfortunately, screenplay writers Paul Attanasio and Daniel Pyne completely butchered the novel and only a few major plot points are kept intact. Many major details are re-written for the cinematic version and anything that would have been deemed minor in the book never made it to the film. The most notable change is the attempt to make this a ´first´ film for Jack Ryan and having him just starting out in life instead of being an established person in the CIA and a married man.
Moving beyond the transformed story and returning to the topic of Ben Affleck, the actor didn´t make a great splash with his performance. At the time "The Sum of All Fears" was filmed, Affleck was young enough and more than capable of injecting a little action into this film and only the fight between Jack Ryan and the person involved in the plot named Mason (Joel Bissonnette) provides any real action featuring the Jack Ryan character. Affleck seems more than happy with just using his charisma and charm to get through his performance and he cannot equal what either Baldwin or Ford did before him. Sadly, the filmmakers cast a perfect actor for the Ryan role in the film. Liev Schreiber would have been a perfect Jack Ryan.
"The Sum of All Fears" is doesn´t add much to the sum of all the Jack Ryan films. This is the least watchable film of the series and the least faithful to the novels. Phil Alden Robinson took the helm as director of the series after Phillip Noyce directed Harrison Ford through the previous two films. Robinson seemed far more inclined to portray Jack Ryan as a desk jockey and less of an ex-Marine who could handle himself with ease. The Tom Clancy books are also known for their technology and whereas the previous three films added a little more techno-babble into their storylines, Robinson concentrated more on politics and conversation than a few neat gizmos to gawk over. With the auto-pilot performance by Ben Affleck and the relatively boring rewrite of the novel, "The Sum of All Fears" is the black sheep of the Jack Ryan franchise.
A third actor stepped into the shoes of Jack Ryan with the intended reboot of the franchise in "The Sum of All Fears." With Ben Affleck taking the role previously filled by Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford, the series had hoped a younger and bankable-at-the-time actor would make the Tom Clancy character another tent pole for the studio. However, the film strayed heavily from the Clancy novel of the same name and while the film did respectable business, Affleck´s star would fall heavily after starring in films "Gigli," "Jersey Girl" and "Surviving Christmas" after his first turn as Jack Ryan. Whereas "The Sum of All Fears" was hoped to be for the Jack Ryan franchise what "Batman Begins" did a couple years later for Bruce Wayne, this would be the first and only time with Affleck as Ryan and the last film to date featuring the character of Jack Ryan.
"The Sum of All Fears" begins with a few scenes that depict a lost nuclear warhead during the 1973 Yom Kippur War that was onboard an Israeli A-4 Skyhawk which was shot down from anti-aircraft fire. The film fast forwards to the year the film was released, 2002. Here it is discovered that a Nazi sympathist named Dressler (Alan Bates) has purchased a nuclear warhead from an arms dealer named Olson (Colm Feore). The bomb is purchased for $400 by Olson and sold to Dressler for $50 million. The bomb´s atomic material is then shipped to the Ukraine where three Russian scientists have been hired to build a nuclear bomb. The intention of the nuclear bomb is to ship it to America and for Dressler to pit the two superpowers against each other in nuclear war.
Jack Ryan´s (Ben Affleck) role in this film is a reboot which finds him as a Junior CIA Analyst on the ´Russian Desk´ where he catches the attention of CIA Director William Cabot (Morgan Freeman) because he had written a lengthy report on Alexander Nemerov (Ciaran Hinds). Nemerov becomes the Russian president after the failing health of the previous president forces him to succumb and it is unknown whether or not Nemerov is a hard-liner and a potential force to be reckoned with. President Fowler (James Cromwell) and his advisors ask Ryan and Cabot to travel to Russia and meet with Nemerov and get a feeling for the new Russian president. After the meeting, Russian attacks Chechnya and it looks as if Nemerov is indeed a hardliner, although Ryan has stated he strongly feels otherwise.
While all of this political posturing and intelligence gathering is going on, a little bit of Ryan´s social life is revealed. Unlike the previous three films which portrayed Ryan as a married family man, "The Sum of All Fears" pretends to be a prequel of sorts and Ryan is still dating Dr. Cathy Muller (Bridget Moynahan). He has told the doctor that he is a historian, but reveals the truth when he is sent to Russian by Cabot. However, after operative John Clark (Liev Schreiber) is sent to Russia to track down the three missing scientists, Ryan is able to take Cathy to a White House dinner and his true profession becomes known to Cathy.
For one moment during the film Ryan stops being an analyst and moves away from pushing a pencil to carrying a gun. He is asked to join Clark in Russian and relay some new intelligence to the field operative. The Jack Ryan franchise has been heavily driven by action and both Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford has flexed their Hollywood muscle to help propel the Ryan character through some nicely handled action sequences. Affleck is almost given a pass from taking part in the action through the entire first half of the film and after a comical exchange with Schreiber, he cocks a pistol and teases the audience that some action may ensue.
The film drags on for the first hour or so as the plot builds up to a climactic nuclear explosion in Baltimore at the halftime mark of the film. "The Sum of All Fears" finally becomes a little exciting during the tense moments after the bomb explosion where a few key members of the cast are either killed or wounded. The post-explosion half of the film finds Ryan trying desperately to convey information to President Fowler about the nuclear explosion and convince him that Nemerov and the Russians are not behind the explosion and hopefully avert an escalation of events that seems ready to birth World War III. Of course, it is a Jack Ryan film and he finds a way to inject a combination of action and intelligence to save the day.
The large nuclear explosion comes fully equipped with a few nice special effects sequences that amps up the excitement of the film for about three minutes. There are some helicopter crashes, cars flipped over by the explosion and lots of dust. A few windows blow out and you definitely get the sense that something has blown up, although there were no buildings shown exploding. "The Sum of All Fears" arrived in theaters just after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and I would tend to believe that the big explosion sequence was neutered to satisfy audience sensibilities at the time. One could also believe that the film´s less-than-expected box office returns were due to the subject nature of a large terrorist attack on an American city.
With Ben Affleck, Tom Clancy finally got an actor the age and physique he had intended Ryan to be during the earlier novels featuring the Jack Ryan character. Unfortunately, screenplay writers Paul Attanasio and Daniel Pyne completely butchered the novel and only a few major plot points are kept intact. Many major details are re-written for the cinematic version and anything that would have been deemed minor in the book never made it to the film. The most notable change is the attempt to make this a ´first´ film for Jack Ryan and having him just starting out in life instead of being an established person in the CIA and a married man.
Moving beyond the transformed story and returning to the topic of Ben Affleck, the actor didn´t make a great splash with his performance. At the time "The Sum of All Fears" was filmed, Affleck was young enough and more than capable of injecting a little action into this film and only the fight between Jack Ryan and the person involved in the plot named Mason (Joel Bissonnette) provides any real action featuring the Jack Ryan character. Affleck seems more than happy with just using his charisma and charm to get through his performance and he cannot equal what either Baldwin or Ford did before him. Sadly, the filmmakers cast a perfect actor for the Ryan role in the film. Liev Schreiber would have been a perfect Jack Ryan.
"The Sum of All Fears" is doesn´t add much to the sum of all the Jack Ryan films. This is the least watchable film of the series and the least faithful to the novels. Phil Alden Robinson took the helm as director of the series after Phillip Noyce directed Harrison Ford through the previous two films. Robinson seemed far more inclined to portray Jack Ryan as a desk jockey and less of an ex-Marine who could handle himself with ease. The Tom Clancy books are also known for their technology and whereas the previous three films added a little more techno-babble into their storylines, Robinson concentrated more on politics and conversation than a few neat gizmos to gawk over. With the auto-pilot performance by Ben Affleck and the relatively boring rewrite of the novel, "The Sum of All Fears" is the black sheep of the Jack Ryan franchise.
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