Rating: 
Summary: Best Jack Ryan Story yet !!
Review: I was a bit sceptical about Ben Affleck taking over the Role of Jack Ryan. Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford had done such a good job in the role. The story takes place with a young Jack Ryan when he is just entering the CIA. Unlike its' predisesors this story has no slow points, it is non stop action from the word go. Morgan Freeman as always brings something special to movie as an experienced CIA agent who takes Jack Ryan under his wing. This is definetly an adult oriented movie with bad language and violence, but if you are an adult this is a great movie that I am sure you will enjoy.
Rating: 
Summary: The sum of all my bad movie fears
Review: Three of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan novels have been turned into movies. Now we have a fourth one: The Sum Of All Fears. Well, after adding bad acting, predictability, and a dull storyline, the sum is of all my bad movie fears. What is the problem with this movie? Well let's break it up into sections.First off is the story. Tom Clancy's story isn't bad. The movie adaptation is. It is basically just a boring suspense movie. The story had potential. But it sugar-coated the actual sum of all of our fears. What would have really happened had the Americans . . .? This subject is not touched on and therefore turns this possible anti-nuclear weapon movie into a boring, edge-of-your-seat as you slide off it and leave during the first five minutes movie. Let's now take a look at Jack Ryan. Harrison Ford was good, and he was getting a little too old for the part, but Ben Affleck is too childish of an actor to portray CIA analyst Jack Ryan. Clancy's gripe about Ford being too old was a little over the top though. Let's face it. Ben Affleck is a terrible actor. Which brings us into the next category... Acting. The acting is terrible. It is corny, contrived, and most of all, TERRIBLE! Michael Byrne was the only actor besides Morgan Freeman to display some acting skills. Line delivery is terrible. Interestingly though, this movie is about neo-fascist Nazis. Well, Byrne played a Nazi in Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade. Predictability. This movie is so terribly predictable. If someone said "no new ideas", well they hit the nail right on the head. Let's look at the beginning . . .. The picture in the cockpit? A tell-tale sign that this pilot will be killed. And of course the extremely predictable ". . ." appears, trying to wrench our hearts out. Can someone tell me why it didn't get incinerated? The . . . is sad, but it is marred by things like contrived emotions. "You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink." And finally we get to the end. Who would have guessed that the Americans would . . .? I did. Camerawork. The camera very rarely sits still. Either it is bouncing around as it follows someone or it is bouncing around while it is attached to a jeep. Whatever happened to smooth pans and the ability to follow someone without bouncing the camera around? Well, that about sums it up. Let's face it. Movie ideas are running low. It seems all we have left are sequels and adaptations of books. Some are good, some are bad. This one is bad.
Rating: 
Summary: Impressive and gripping--3.8 stars rounds to 4.
Review: The producers of this film decided to change the villains from Islamic extremists to neo-nazis (after all, Nazis don't have a lobby--everyone hates them). The producers have to be hating life post-911 since in my opinion at least this greatly detracted from the relevance of the film. Serves them right for listening to Political Correctness rather than reality. The movie is based, of course, on Tom Clancy's novel "The Sum of All Fears" and deals with the detonation by terrorists of an atomic bomb on American soil. To that extent, the movie follows the novel. But the movie alters the villains ..., and apparently decided to cast the hero, Jack Ryan, as a much younger man evidently to enable Ben Affleck to play the part. Afleck is OK as Jack Ryan, but only OK. Morgan Freeman does his customary great job in the role as the CIA director, and his mentoring of Ryan is my favorite part of the movie. The chemistry between Freeman and Affleck is good, which helps to make up for, well, Affleck. The rest of the cast turns in pretty decent performances. Since in the movie Ryan is a junior analyst rather than Deputy CIA Director (to enable Affleck to play Ryan) the part where Ryan prevents world war 3 is less plausible. Readers of the book will know what I mean--spoiler omitted here. Overall, the movie moves along pretty well, and tells a complicated story about as coherently as possible in the movie medium. There is plenty of drama and action. The special effects are good. This is not a great movie, but it is a good one. The DVD audio and video are very good.
Rating:
Summary: Wasn't September 11th enough?
Review: Weren't the horrific events of September 11th enough?Can we deal with a Nuclear War between Russia and the United States?
Such movies initaite ideas among terrorist worldwide in further attaining their goals and granting them new ideas, such as planting a nuclear bomb in a football stadium!
Rating:
Summary: a bit disappointing
Review: i loved red october, patriot games, and clear and present danger. i watched all three one night, sum of all fears had just come out, so felt obligated to watch sum of all fears. i went that night and watched it. i was a quite disappointed in the acting. morgan freeman is a wonderful actor and i love many of his movies, and ben afleck is not one of my favorites, but i wanted to watch it because the commercials looked good. the plot was wonderful and the filmography was done nicely; the acting really left a bitter taste in my mouth, though. no offence to mr. afleck, but it wasn't his best hour.
Rating:
Summary: A Pleasant Surprise
Review: Like many Clancy readers, I was a little apprehensive about the prospects of Ben Affleck playing the part of Jack Ryan. Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford set the bar very high with their respective performances as Ryan. While I do like Affleck, I was concerned about whether or not he was right for the role for a number of reasons(his young age and whether or not he was a serious enough actor to pull it off.) While it wasn't a knockout performance, Affleck was decent enough. One of the problems I had with the movie was that they changed Ryan's background and left out the part of his life when he worked for Merryl Lynch and made millions of dollars investing. I was also very upset that they changed the villains of the book, Islamic fundementalists, to Neo-facists in the movie. Had they kept that part of the plot true to the book and not bended to political correctness run amok, a lot of the people who reviewed this movie at 3 stars would have given it higher ratings. The neo-facists in the movie come off as too cartoonish and its not exactly clear how a US-Russian war would lead to their ascension to power. It would have been much more realistic and believeable if the terrorrists were Muslims, like they were in the book. Nevertheless, the movie succeeds as a suspenseful, political pot-boiler. The director, Philip Alden Robinson, does a great job of setting up the movie and its characters and then is successful in portraying the chaos and destruction consequent to a nuclear explosion. This movie will leave you on the edge of your seat. Morgan Freeman gives an excellent performance as CIA Director Cabot(basically a reincarnation of James Earl Jones' Admiral Greer from the previous Ryan movies and books) while James Cromwell does a good job as the President and John Clark is played quite nicely by Liev Schreiber. While I wish they would have kept the villains true to the book, this is still an excellent movie with good acting, good direction, and a nice soundtrack. I deffinitely reccomend this movie.
Rating:
Summary: another great cold war movie
Review: again this is a typical tom clancy based movie. i think that the russians are a favorite adversary. it is understandable because the russians were enemies for a long time. anyway. it is a great movie. in the hunt for red october it was a russian sub. this time the russins build a bomb from american made material. with the events of 9-11 it makes a very scary and very possible scenario. the ending is a bit unbelieveable with ryan and his girlfriend eating a picnic in washington dc after a nuke exploded not far from there. the conversation with the source in the kremlin at the end was hard to believe when he found out that bill cabbot died. i find it hard to believe that someone in harms way would be so willing to trust someone who he has no clue who it is. maybe i am being to analytical. it is still a good movie if you like the other movies that have been based off clancy's novels.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book, but a God-awful movie.
Review: I read Clancy's novel prior to seeing the movie, and I loved the book. I certainly cannot say the same for this film. I understand that the length of many of Clancy's novels make it very difficult to reamin faithful to the books when trying to make a two hour movie, but I feel that because of the changes involved in making this movie, a lot of things were lost. For example, by changing the terrorists from Muslim extremists to neo-Nazis, we lose the heated exchange between Ryan and President Fowler over the President's desire to nuke an Iranian city which is the home of the financial backer of the terror attack. Fowler wishes to strike in response to the attack which has taken personally as an attempt on his own life, while Ryan disapproves, citing that other measures can be used to deal with this man rather than nuking a city and killing innocent people. Also lost is Fowler's National Security Advisor, Elizabeth Elliot (not even in the movie), who seeks to discredit Ryan and attempts to destroy both his professional and personal lives. Also missing is Ryan's plan to bring peace to the Middle East. Actually, if there's a reason to buy or rent the DVD, it would be the commentary track with Robinson and Clancy, in which Clancy picks the entire film apart. It is actually quite hilarious! I hear "Red Rabbit" is the next Ryan novel in line for the film treatment. Hopefully there will be a complete turnover of cast and crew, and Paramount will bring in some people who can actually get it right.
Rating:
Summary: Sum of All Fears
Review: When I was in college I heard Tom Clancy give a lecture. He was one of three bestselling authors whose lectures I attended in those days. The others were Kurt Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury. Tom Clancy was easily the least impressive. While Vonnegut & Bradbury talked about the art of writing, story construction, heroic quests and narrative structure, Clancy's primary message was limited to "vote Republican." He was bored with the topic of storytelling, brushing it off with the comment that his inspiration came from the front page section of The Washington Post, and not much more than that. His lack of interest probably explains why his Jack Ryan may be the blandest recurring protagonist in literature. He completely lacks the personality that is obviously present in Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Horace Rumpole or James Bond. As such he is the easiest to transform from film to film. In previous incarnations he was portrayed by Alec Baldwin in the stylish Hunt for Red October and by Harrison Ford in the grittier Patriot Games & Clear & Present Danger. Supporting characters remained a constant as with the Bond pictures and the Ryan character was something of an everyman who gets sucked into adventures, but an everyman with little to no distinguishing characteristics. (Had these films been made in the '40s & 50's Cary Grant would be an ideal choice. Don't believe me? Watch North by Northwest.) A major star is needed to bring the character to life. Any major star would do. A black woman could play the part and it would still work. (Actually that would be pretty cool -- Pam Grier as Jackie Ryan in The Cardinal and the Kremlin!) In this movie we get Ben Affleck, who as an actor has proved himself in Chasing Amy, even if he has played the pretty boy leads in two Maichael Bay movies. He is a much younger actor than Harrison Ford and they make his youth work in terms of the plot to actually add suspense as an analyst who is always dead on but no one believes him because of his youth (a regular Pandora). (I'd still like to see Pam Grier try the role.) He is aided by a talented supporting cast, including Liev Schriber, breaking out of the art house into mainstream Hollywood by playing John Clark, another recurring character previously played in the films by Willem Dafoe. Each movie must be taken on its own merits from the story it manages to pull from the unwieldy tomes Tom Clancy cranks out and continuity be damned. This one fares pretty well, all things considered. It feels pretty much like a standard issue action thriller, but then so did the previous installments. And as usual the filmmakers had a better understanding of the visual arts than Clancy has of writing clear and concise sentences. Some sequences are extremely well put together, especially the nuclear blast which is never actually shown, just the immediate aftermath. Solid performances all around help to sustain this action centerpiece. Much of it is a by the numbers action film, but then so are James Bond movies. Of course Bond movies also usually have a sharper sense of humor and a more noteworthy protagonist. But for what it was it was an enjoyable thriller with no particularly bad parts and several good moments. John Ford was once quoted as saying that a good movie is one with three great moments and no bad parts. I think that can be applied to this movie.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing poltical / disaster thriller
Review: ... Ben Affleck has taken over the role of Jack Ryan, played in previous movies by Harrison Ford. Affleck is competent enough to make us forget that Ryan is suddenly thirty years younger and at the start of his career. The story, at times convoluted and confusing, revolves around an atomic bomb lost in the Golan Heights in 1973 by the Israelis in one of their endless wars with the Arab world. Decades later it is unearthed by a peasant who, thinking it is a piece of junk, peddles it to an arms dealer. The dealer then sells it to a group of neo-Nazis who plan to use it to provoke a war between the United States and Russia. American officials, already suspicious of Russia's recent behavior, believe they have all the proof they need after the attack occurs. Only Ryan thinks otherwise, and it is up to him to prevent World War III. The technical aspects of "The Sum of all Fears" are uniformly first-rate. The cast, which includes Morgan Freeman and Alan Bates, as well as the marvelous character actors James Cromwell and Philip Baker Hall, works hard at making their characters credible. In the end, though, they are undone by some weak scriptwriting and absurd plot twists.
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