The Sum of All Fears

Rating:
Summary: I really enjoyed this movie...
Review: I thought this was a really good movie. There are a lot of people in this movie & so much that you have to follow that you don't want to look away from the screen once or you might miss something. After watching this movie twice there are still some things that I'm not understanding completely but I still get most of it & it's really good. The story makes sense & will keep you on the edge of your seat. I recommend this movie.

Rating:
Summary: Finally a more realistic Jack Ryan
Review: Harrison Ford played the part of Jack Ryan as best he could, considering Tom Clancy wrote the character as a young CIA analyst. Various sources report that Clancy was particularly unhappy about Ford's casting as Ryan, and is presumably much happier with Affleck now playing the role. Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger were both fine films, but Sum of All Fears easily surpasses them. The younger Ben Affleck playing Ryan is one factor, but not the only one. Simply stated, Sum of All Fears is a much tighter and more action packed thriller than its predecessors.

The plot goes like this: an Israeli bomber carrying a nuclear bomb is shot down in the desert and quickly buried by the shifting sands. Many years later the bomb is dug up by locals who sell such relics as scrap, not knowing the deadly nature of their find. The bomb is purchased by a group of Nazis who intend to make it into a working bomb and secretly ship it to the US. Their plan is simple, detonate the bomb in the US and frame the Russians, causing an all out nuclear war between the two superpowers. Ryan is a brash, young CIA Info Analyst trying to prove the diabolical plot and prevent world war.

The film does a fine job of presenting all this with a very realistic feel. The events that unfold leading up to the clash are logical and not at all contrived. In light of America's newfound awareness of such terrorist activities, convincing the audience that this is possible is considerably easier for the filmmakers. The choice of Nazis as the bad guys is an obvious, and understandable compromise. It would be far more realistic to make the terrorists middle eastern, but would likely cause such a ruckus with many audiences it just wouldn't be worth the trouble. Filmmakers are faced with a much smaller pool of potential bad guys these days, as every ethnicity attempts to make itself a protected class in society.

Strong performances are turned in by all involved. Although Ryan's girlfriend is a wholly unnecessary character, but obviously thrown in to give Affleck a love interest where none is needed.

The only thing keeping the film from achieving true greatness is the contrived nature of Ryan's character. From the viewpoint of the studio and the general viewing public, it is a necessity to have a primary hero protagonist whom the action of the story revolves around. In reality, Ryan's character would have been played by many different individuals. But that would present the challenge to the audience to track the development of multiple characters, in the end it's just easier to lump them all into one.

I feel it is worth noting the excellent use of visual effects in the film. Lucas and Spielberg take note - the stunts and CGI effects were used sparingly and only when absolutely necessary to advance the plot. In particular I felt the overhead, satellite view shots of the cities that preceded many of the scenes were especially effective. Aside from serving as an excellent transition between scenes and geographic locales, they reinforced a central them of the film: that the advance of technology has effectively shrunk the size of the world we live in. Also, they give the audience a sense of the perspective that an intelligence organization like the CIA must take when approaching the world. Unlike the individual members of the audience who see things from a limited ground level perspective, the CIA has to step back and see the big picture.

Rating:
Summary: Great movie, but chronologically confusing.
Review: I finally got around to watching this one over the weekend, and although I enjoyed it immensely, I have to give it a mixed review. Now admittedly, I haven't read the book yet -- it's been sitting on my shelf waiting for me to get to it for far too long -- so I'll do my mea culpa right now if the answers to my concerns are already duly explained.

The most glaring issue for me was, where does this movie fit chronologically with the other Jack Ryan films? It starts with a background scene from the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, and then jumps to "29 years later", which means the main story would be set in 2002. However, instead of the "married with children" Jack Ryan that we saw in "Patriot Games" and "Clear and Present Danger", we find a young, single Jack Ryan (played by Ben Affleck) who is still essentially an unknown nobody at the CIA. We also get introduced to a similarly youthful Jack Clark, of "Rainbow Six" fame. I'm not sure if these anachronistic gymnastics were intentional or not, but I found it more than a bit distracting as I watched this film. To borrow a phrase from Kelly Bundy, the whole thing "wobbles the mind."

Aside from that, though, it was a typical Tom Clancy technothriller, chock full of high suspense from start to finish. This one resurrects the spectre of nuclear warfare between the U.S. and post-Soviet Russia after a neo-Fascist terror cell unleases a low-yield nuke in Baltimore, then sets about to make it look like it was a Russian attack. As predicted, the U.S. response only serves to up the ante until the two nations stand teetering at the brink of mutual annihilation.

In the meantime, the young Jack Ryan follows his uncanny instincts to unravel the puzzle in a fast-paced, action-filled plot line that never eases up the tension. The special effects for the nuclear blast are very well done indeed. However, the sight of Ryan traipsing around near ground zero apparently without any harmful side effects from the radiation is just a teensy oversight in the realism department.

Overall I cannot say I was at all disappointed by these above lapses, just puzzled. The story itself was, as are all the Clancy films, gripping and suspenseful. Definitely a good movie.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad
Review: Not a bad film. The first hour is quite boring, consisting mainly of imposing men wearing suits sitting in equally imposing rooms, discussing strageties etc.

But it picks up and becomes quite an enjoyable film. Ben Affleck isn't a bad actor, but here he is out-ranked by maverick Morgan Freeman, and excellent supporting actors such as James Cromwell and Liev Schreiber.


Rating:
Summary: Watchable film!
Review: Tom Clancy best seller is well filmed with towering locations and a cast with peaks and lows .
The script lacks of dramatic continuity and in more than once it tends to fall in common grounds .
Watch for instance Seven days in May and you will know whayt I mean .
The plot in question well deserved a deeper gaze for the multiple aspects considered .
But nevertheless it is a worthable work even it will not become a masterpiece or a cult movie in the future .
Affleck is charismatic and emerges as the substitute of Kevin Costner ten years ago and Keanu Reeves five years ago , but its performance lacks deepness, its role is too predictable and besides he is quite expressionless from beginning to end and the lines for his character certainly do not help him at all .


Rating:
Summary: Suprising!
Review: When this movie first came out, I wasn't too interested in seeing it because I didn't think I would understand it. I was very suprised at how good it was. And how much I DID understand it. hah. I noticed how realistic the military was, especially in Russia. I was definitely feeling that. Most movies with military shown in them, are nothing like how it really is. I haven't seen the other Jack Ryan movies, so I couldn't really compare them to SOAF. But I did enjoy it very much. Great acting..realistic..all together very refreshing and definitely worth seeing again.

Rating:
Summary: Not as faithful to the source as I'd have wanted
Review: In "The Sum of All Fears", Ben Affleck takes over the role of CIA wizkid Jack Ryan from Harrison Ford and Alac Baldwin. Here Ryan is given the task of trying to figure out why three Russian scientist have gone missing. Supporting him is Ryan's supervisor Bill Cabott (respectfully played by Morgan Freeman) and field man John Clark (Liev Schreber who excellentally plays a rare unambigusos good guy role). Eventually they figure out that there is a plot by neo-Nazis to blow up the Super Bowl while the President of the U.S is attending. I had a few major problems in the translation of the book (by Tom Clancy) to the movie. First of all, "The Sum of ALl Fears" is my favorite Clancy book. I thought that he had increadible courage (and more than a little spooky forsight) to make the bad guys in the novel fanatic Muslems. I realize that the movie was filmed and completed before September 11th 2001, and so sensitivety was not the reason that the bad guys were changed. I still thought that making the bad guys Nazis was very much taking the cowards way out on the part of the producers and studio managers. I really can't forgive them for that one. The Ryan series chronology is also very confusing. Ford's Jack Ryan was quite a bit older and far more advanced in his career in the Agency. Affleck's incarnation is much younger and very much at the beginning of his. It seems that all of the movies are represented at their present time, respectivly. So what order are they supposed to be in? Are each of the movies supposed to be independent of each other? Same thing applys to the John Clark character, played in "Clear in Present Danger" by Willam DeFoe, now played by a much younger (and more cold blooded) Schreber. The plot is ok, not a lot of holes that I could see. It is fast paced and very suspencful in a will-they-stop-it-in-time manner. It is in no way boring; it will not make you sorry you're watching it. Director Phil Alden Robinson keeps everything moving along at a frantic pace. However I was really upset with the lack of combat scenes, all the fighting seemed to be one sided. I really wish they had followed the book a little more closer.