The Sum of All Fears (film)

The Sum of All Fears
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Phil Alden Robinson
Produced by	Mace Neufeld
Written by	Tom Clancy (novel) Paul Attanasio, Daniel Pyne (screenplay)
Starring	Ben Affleck Morgan Freeman James Cromwell Ciarán Hinds Liev Schreiber Bridget Moynahan Michael Byrne
Music by	Jerry Goldsmith
Cinematography	John Lindley
Editing by	Neil Travis Nicolas de Toth (addl)
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	May 31, 2002 (2002-05-31)
Running time	124 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	US$68 million
Box office	$193,921,372

The Sum of All Fears is a 2002 American action film/political thriller directed by Phil Alden Robinson and based on the novel The Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy. Starring Ben Affleck and Morgan Freeman it was released by Paramount Pictures in the United States on May 31, 2002.

This fourth film in the Jack Ryan film series is a reboot set in 2002, with Ryan portrayed as younger than in the 1990 film The Hunt for Red October (set in 1984), and that film's sequels, Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger.

Plot

The film begins with a sequence inspired by the novel's prologue set during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which a single Israeli A-4 jet carrying a nuclear weapon is shot down over the Syrian desert. The bomb, over time, is consumed by the sand and disappears.

The film narrative then shifts forward 29 years and inside a secret government bunker in Mount Weather, Virginia, where President J. Robert Fowler (James Cromwell) and some of his senior national security advisors, including Central Intelligence Agency Director William Cabot (Freeman), are conducting a top-secret military simulation of a Russian nuclear attack against the United States.

In 2002, the bomb is found in Syria by a couple of scrap dealers and unwittingly sold to an arms dealer named Olson (Colm Feore), who in turn sells it to an Austrian neo-Nazi named Richard Dressler (Alan Bates) for US$50 million.

Meanwhile, the United States becomes concerned when Alexander Nemerov (Ciarán Hinds) becomes the new president of the Russian Federation. Nemerov is seen as a hard-liner with regard to his control over the Russian military. The Director of Central Intelligence seeks the opinion of CIA analyst Jack Ryan (Affleck), who has done extensive research on Nemerov's life and career. While on a routine inspection of Russia's nuclear weapons facilities, Cabot and Ryan are invited to the Kremlin to meet with Nemerov personally. Tension arises when Nemerov likens the United States' involvement in Russian-Chechen affairs to "sleeping with another man's wife", with Russia the betrayed and vengeful husband. Nonetheless, Nemerov appears to like Ryan after Ryan compliments Nemerov in Russian.

During the inspection, Ryan notices that three senior Russian nuclear technicians are not present at the facility. Nemerov's aide Anatoli Grushkov (Michael Byrne) attempts to assuage Ryan's concerns by telling him that the three scientists are out sick, on vacation, and recently deceased, respectively. Cabot's covert informant in Moscow, known by his codename 'Spinnaker', tells Cabot that Grushkov's explanations are false, and that the whereabouts of the three scientists are truly unknown to the Russian government. Upon arrival in Washington, Cabot sends CIA operative John Clark (Liev Schreiber) to track down the missing scientists. Clark discovers the three scientists in Ukraine constructing Dressler's bomb.

When Nemerov takes responsibility for an unauthorized gas-warfare attack on Grozny, the capital city of Chechnya, Fowler and his administration become concerned with the volatility of Nemerov's military policies and respond by sending NATO peacekeeping troops to Chechnya. Ryan correctly believes that Nemerov took responsibility for the act only to save face before the radicals in Russia, and loses credibility from the White House. Meanwhile, the nuclear bomb arrives in a crate in Baltimore, Maryland, and is placed at an American football stadium disguised as a cigarette vending machine.

In a recording, Dressler reveals his intentions in placing the bomb in Baltimore: frustrated and angered with the American and Russian paternalism over smaller European nations, Dressler has resolved to destroy both nations, much as Adolf Hitler desired to in World War II. Dressler notes that Hitler was "not crazy", but "stupid" in that he tried to fight the Soviet Union and the United States simultaneously. Rather, he suggests one must get "America and Russia to fight each other... and destroy each other." By detonating a nuclear weapon on American soil, Dressler and his associates plan to aggravate an already tense relationship between the two superpowers to the point of full-blown nuclear war.

Ryan attempts to inform Cabot that the bomb is in Baltimore, but it turns out that Fowler and Cabot are attending a football game in the stadium where the bomb is planted. The noise from the game makes it too difficult for Cabot to hear Ryan's warning. After several tries, Ryan gets the warning across and Cabot orders the Secret Service agents to rush the President out of the stadium. The President manages to escape the stadium, but only moments before the bomb detonates, destroying a significant part of the city and scattering the President's motorcade.

After the explosion, Fowler is rescued by heliborne United States Marines, and taken airborne on a Boeing E-4B Advanced Airborne Command Post with his cabinet. Immediately, they fear that the bomb was Russian. Ryan's girlfriend, Dr. Catherine Muller (Bridget Moynahan), survives the blast and Ryan survives a helicopter crash, but Cabot dies later at a hospital.

After being informed about the explosion, Dressler telephones one of his associates, a corrupt general in the Russian Air Force. In order to further aggravate the situation, the general orders his Tu-22M Backfire pilots to strike an American aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis with standoff missiles in the North Sea under the false pretext that a U.S. ICBM has destroyed Moscow. The strike heavily damages the Stennis and renders the carrier incapable of launching aircraft. In response, Fowler orders United States Air Force F-16 fighter jets to attack the originating Russian air base. Tensions escalate as trust between Fowler and Nemerov rapidly deteriorates. To prove that he is willing to take the exchange to the next level, Fowler orders SNAPCOUNT, the military alert level for maximum readiness, preparing to launch a massive nuclear strike on Russian military targets. Seeing that the U.S. has dispatched B-2 Spirit stealth bombers and nuclear submarines, Nemerov prepares to launch his ICBMs on the United States.

Ryan first learns about the origin of the bomb after the Army Radiation Assessment Team conducts an isotopic fingerprint analysis of air samples around ground zero in Baltimore. It is concluded that the plutonium for the Baltimore bomb was manufactured in Savannah River nuclear plant in South Carolina in 1968, thus indicating that the original fissile material was of American, not Russian, origin. He tries, unsuccessfully, to communicate this information to Fowler. After being with the dying Cabot, Ryan takes Cabot's personal effects, and with Cabot's text messenger, asks Spinnaker how the American plutonium ended up in a Russian bomb. Spinnaker tells him that the United States had secretly managed to send it to Israel for their nuclear weapons program. Meanwhile, John Clark learns from Ghazi, one of the scrap dealers who is dying from being exposed to the bomb's radiation, that it was Olson who bought the bomb and that he lives in Damascus. Ryan's co-workers in the CIA infiltrate Olson's computer and download files that implicate Dressler as the person who bought the plutonium and who is behind the Baltimore attack. Ryan learns of this from his team.

Ryan gets to the Baltimore harbor docks, only to find Dressler's American contact Lod Mason murdered by Dressler's German hitman Haft. Haft attacks Ryan, but Ryan manages to get the upper hand on him. Ryan tries to force Haft to talk, but is thwarted as the Maryland State Police arrive. Via a Maryland State Police helicopter, Ryan manages to get to The Pentagon, where he is able to communicate the truth to Nemerov. Relying on Ryan's word, Nemerov proposes a plan to Fowler to a stand down. Fowler follows suit, and the nuclear war is averted.

The two presidents meet and make peace as agents of both governments hunt down and assassinate the terrorist conspirators. John Clark slits Olson's throat, Russian agents pursue and shoot the traitorous General Dubinin in a snow-covered forest, and as Grushkov looks on, Dressler has his bodyguard start his car engine to rule out a car bomb, only to be killed after he replaces him in the car, due to him pushing in the cigarette lighter, which actually triggers the bomb.

In Washington, D.C., Fowler and Nemerov address the Baltimore tragedy and the future of weapons of mass destruction during a speech on the White House lawn. In a nearby park, Ryan and Muller are having a picnic when they are approached by Grushkov. It is revealed that Grushkov is Spinnaker, Cabot's covert source in Moscow. Grushkov gives Muller a "modest gift" for her engagement to Ryan. Muller and Ryan are perplexed, as they have not told anyone of their engagement. Ryan asks Grushkov how he could possibly know this secret, but he simply smiles, shrugs and walks away.

Cast

• Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan
• Morgan Freeman as William Cabot, Director of Central Intelligence
• Bridget Moynahan as Dr. Catherine Muller
• James Cromwell as J. Robert Fowler, President of the United States
• Liev Schreiber as John Clark
• Michael Byrne as Anatoli Grushkov
• Colm Feore as Olson
• Alan Bates as Richard Dressler
• Ron Rifkin as Sidney Owens, Secretary of State
• Ciarán Hinds as Alexander Nemerov, President of the Russian Federation
• Bruce McGill as Gene Revell, National Security Advisor
• Richard Marner as President Zorkin
• Philip Baker Hall as David Becker, Secretary of Defense
• Ken Jenkins as Admiral Pollack
• Philip Akin as General Wilkes
• John Beasley as General Lasseter, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Deviations from the book

While the basic plot was the same, there were significant changes from the book. Noting these substantial changes, in the commentary track on the DVD release, Tom Clancy jokingly introduces himself as "the author of the book that he [Phil Alden Robinson, who is present with Clancy] ignored".

The original terrorists in the novel were Arab nationalists, but in the movie, they are changed to neo-fascists. A common misconception is that this was done as a reaction to the September 11 attacks. However, the movie finished filming in June 2001.

On the "making-of" DVD extra, the director says that this was purely for elements relating to the plot, as Arab terrorists would not be able to plausibly accomplish all that was necessary for the story to work. The group Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) did mount a two-year lobbying campaign that ended on January 26, 2001, against using "Muslim villains", as the original book version did. Director Phil Alden Robinson is quoted in a letter to CAIR saying "I hope you will be reassured that I have no intention of promoting negative images of Muslims or Arabs, and I wish you the best in your continuing efforts to combat discrimination".

Screenwriter Dan Pyne claims that the decision to not use Arab terrorists was "possibly because that has become a cliché. At the time that I started writing the Sum Of All Fears, Joerg Haider was just starting to come into play in Austria. And simultaneous with that, I think, there was some neo-nationalist activity in Holland, and there was stuff going on in Spain and in Italy. So it seemed like a logical and lasting idea that would be universal." It has also been noted that a larger percent of profits stems from international audiences, and American filmmakers work to avoid alienating large segments of this customer base.

Reception

The film received mixed reviews. As of November 2009, Rotten Tomatoes reports that 59% of critics gave the film positive reviews and that the average rating was 6/10 based on a total of 166 reviews counted. Peter Travers criticised Affleck's performance, saying it "merely creates an outline for a role he still needs to grow into, a role that Ford effortlessly filled with authority." Richard Roeper felt the movie "is almost impossible to follow -- and there's something cringe-inducing about seeing an American football stadium nuked as pop entertainment." Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune called it "an implausible apocalypse without depth or resonance", while Peter Rainer of New York Magazine felt the "movie has been upstaged by the sum of our fears."

A few positive reviews came from The Argus, who praised Freeman for giving "the William Cabot character such validity." Roger Ebert felt that "the use of the neo-Nazis is politically correct: Best to invent villains who won't offend any audiences." But he also feels "Jack Ryan's one-man actions in post-bomb Baltimore are unlikely and way too well-timed."

According to Box Office Mojo, the movie made U.S. $118,907,036 and $75,014,336 in foreign totals, well recovering its $68 million production costs.

External links

• The Sum of All Fears at the Internet Movie Database
• The Sum of All Fears at AllRovi
• The Sum of All Fears at Box Office Mojo