Rating: 
Summary: Lots of action and crash and not much more
Review: Well, I guess it depends on why you'd watch this movie (doesn't it always?)
If you're looking for a loud and eventful couple of hours to empty your brain from all the daily activities, then go for it, but the movie lacks a back-bone and is not worth owning. It's -- once again -- about making a regular guy save the world. I get bored with these concepts as they're so repetetive and predictable.
Rating: 
Summary: not what you expect
Review: Starts with beautiful music and historical intrigue about Israel's nuclear bomb. And then goes downhill. Mind you, I have not read the book, I am judging the movie on its own merits.The tension buildup before the nuclear blast is not skillful enough. That dinner with the President (and the dull jokes there) is not necessarily needed. Ben Affleck's flying about in the helicopter that gets destroyed is a meaningless, noisy, and unrealistic scene. The US President is portrayed as an old neurotic half-moron surrounded by like-spirited peers. The Russian President looks like a gloomier and impotent counterpart of his US colleague. There is not enough action for a military movie. The Russian attack on the US ship is the closest thing. In fact, there is no quality action in the entire movie. In total: the characters are flat, the storyline is laughable, and no action. Has the skeleton of a 007 movie, but none of the muscle.
Rating: 
Summary: Sum of All Fears
Review: Do yourself a fovor and leave this one on the shelf and instead pick up the book because Ben Affleck does a horrible job replacing Harrison Ford as Agent Jack Ryan. Again, not worth it and if you want to see a good action thriller, get Black Hawk Down. If you read the book, Sum of All Fears will disappoint you.
Rating:
Summary: Leave it on the shelf
Review: I love Tom Clancy books. They are a great read and quite an adventure. I also like all the actors in this movie. They are all quality actors with great bodies of work however this is not a film that will shine in anyone's resume. The script, what little there is , bears little resemblence to the great book that it is based upon.
The movie loses crediblity in the very beginning and never regains it. I certainly wasn't expecting it to be a documentary but some common sense in dealing with nuclear fallout and radioactive materials would have been helpful. I like Affleck and feel that he would be a good Jack Ryan but he doesn't get a chance in this movie. Poor character development, poor plot line and all you have left is action scenes which just don't add up.
If you truly want to see this movie, just rent it and save your money for better movies to buy. Shame on the screenwriters. They certainly could do better work than this.
Rating:
Summary: Affleck, the wooden face.
Review: Affleck is simply one of the worst actors of his generation. His pal Matt Damon is miles and miles ahead of him in terms of acting capability. Add this to a book that was not translated into the screen: it was "butchered" into the screen! Clancy's novels are always seven hundred pages or more of highly technical details and hundreds of subplots: it's almost impossible to adapt them properly (that's why some of Stephen King's novels are adpated to mini-series; that's why Peter Jackson adapted The Lord Of The RIngs into three films). A waste of time, but you can still rent it for a laugh. Just don't buy it.
Rating:
Summary: Re-starting and re-writing Clancy's Ryan
Review: Don't expect the Clancy book... don't even expect Clancy's plotting (they changed the bad guys, foolishly). They also made Jack Ryan a rookie so Ben Affleck could portray him. It doesn't fit in with the previous Baldwin/Ford films in the Ryan series.
It's a prequel in terms of the character, but a sequel in terms of being set in modern day. Got that? Let me start again. As a cold-war gone hot kind of suspense thriller it will probably hold your interest. It's a talky,
outsmart the politicians kind of a thing, mostly. Morgan Freeman is charismatic and always a pleasure to watch. Affleck is... well... probably about what you would expect. He's not a bad actor, but he's not a particularly good one (at least here)either. When you finally get to the big scene.. it's a let down and the film still has a half hour or so before it wraps up. During that last half-hour credibility really stretches. Good for a rental, and Freeman's performance.
Rating:
Summary: An unwanted gift
Review: Someone bought this movie for me as a gift but I wouldn't recommend anyone buy this movie. It isn't that the premise is absurd, it's that the reactions are and the logistics of how the event is handled are insulting to anyone with a memory of Sept. 11. Little things, like Ben Affleck running around a ruined city, talking on a cell phone. Doesn't anyone remember that after the attacks on Sept. 11, phone lines were jammed. Getting through on them was next to impossible, but Affleck pretty much runs through most of the movie with a phone glued to his ear. There's more, but overall, this was a bad movie.
Rating:
Summary: Big-budget movie with low-budget quality. I want a refund.
Review: I've seen two films in the past year that while watching them I thought they were decent. Then when they were over and I made my way out of the theatre, all of their bad points started piling up until I got disgusted with them and decided the movies actually sucked. Ali was the first. This was the second. At least Ali had a good performance by Will Smith. This one had--uh, well, nothing redeeming. Ben Afflect seemed to be running around clueless or frantic the whole movie. Morgan Freeman was sufficient as the typical CIA honcho. No big acting stretch there. The spineless studio drones decided to make the Neo-Nazis, rather than Islamic fanatics, the driving force in attempting to start a world war. Puh-lease. Well... hey, maybe they're right... perhaps Islamic fanatics would never do anything terroristic. And that's just one problem with the story alone. It seemed like they were trying to make the movie look big-budget while at the same time they didn't want to spend any money on it. The nuclear blast was seen only through a distant mushroom cloud, the hospital windows getting blown in, and the helicopters knocked around in the sky. And even those special effects were brief. If you saw the tv commercial for the movie, you saw all of the special effects. Hello??? What a wasted opportunity. And after that, one of the most ridiculous scenes was Ben Affleck in an urban area at night with flames (supposedly the result of a nuclear blast) lapping at him while he's running to the dramatic music. And how convenient that he could RUN to his destination, in a city that had been devastated by a nuclear blast, in time to save the world. Then you have the typical directoral mistakes that I instantly notice and take me right out of the movie. For instance when someone cuts a hole out of a fence and sets it on the ground next to them. Then they crawl through the hole in the fence to the other side. And suddenly the section of fence that they removed is now on their side of the fence, as though they pushed it through initially. That kind of junk in movies annoys me. There were so many improbabilities and absurdities that I don't want to go into them all. It's just stupid stuff that should not happen in a movie like this. Taken individually they can be shrugged off, but cumulatively they destroy the movie and the experience. Again, I'm at a loss at how many reviewers likely (or loved) this movie. Have they not seen the preceeding (and much better) Clancy adaptations? Or is it that they just don't think about it? This was a big-budget movie that in the end came across as low-budget quality. I won't even rent this to see it again. It annoyed me that much.
Rating: 
Summary: Stepping Into The Shoes Of Jack Ryan
Review: The fourth film based on Tom Clancy's CIA analyst character Jack Ryan, but the first since the excellent 1994 film CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER, THE SUM OF ALL FEARS sees Ben Affleck get the extremely unenviable job of playing the character that Alec Baldwin essayed marvelously in THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, and the inestimable Harrison Ford polished to a tee in PATRIOT GAMES and CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER. And while he's not totally successful at doing it, he does a better job than most other actors of his generation might have done. This time around, the situation revolves around a nuclear weapon being stolen by a group of neo-Nazi fascists, led by a Hitler-type fanatic named Dressler (Alan Bates), whose intent is to start a nuclear exchange between the US and Russia that will result in a Fourth Reich rising from the ashes. Under the mentorship of CIA head Cabot (the always reliable Morgan Freeman), Affleck rushes to try to convince both the American president (James Cromwell) and the Russians of the actual reality of this threat before a fatal misunderstanding starts World War III. It becomes even more imperative when that nuclear device is detonated in Baltimore, obliterating that city in a mushroom cloud. THE SUM OF ALL FEARS is fairly well directed by Phil Alden Robinson, whose 1992 techno-thriller SNEAKERS is an extremely underrated piece. Affleck does what he can in trying to make himself believable as Jack Ryan; and as mentioned before, he does more than enough to avoid unfair comparisons between him, Ford, and Baldwin. Cromwell makes for a very good President; and Bates is absolutely chilling as Dressler. In fact, his performance really is the best in the movie because his low-key acting makes his character not only seem plausible but probable. I can't speak to the changing of the villains from Islamic extremists in the book to neo-Nazis in the film; but the film would almost certainly have gotten the same rating anyway--it is slightly flawed, but never boring despite its lengthy running time. Given how soon it came out in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001, its scenario is quite realistic long about now. Jerry Goldsmith's score adds to the film's intense drama. To "sum" it all up, THE SUM OF ALL FEARS is a somewhat imperfect film, but, as with its three predecessors, far better than almost any other action film there is out there.
Rating: 
Summary: Too close for comforrt
Review: Sum of All Fears is definitely a must-own-it type of film. With the US on the verge of war against Iraq this couldn't be a better illustration as to what we could be facing.
The film is about the United States going to war with Russia over a bombing that took place on American soil. The bad thing about it is that Russia was not responsible for the bomb, but no one takes the time to research the truth.
In the film James Cromwell plays the part of the bull headed president that just doesn't want to listen to reason (just like our President now). It takes everything but an act of God to keep an international nuclear war from happening. Lucky for the innocent people of both countries, there is Ben Affleck and a few others that are willing to get to the truth before they see millions die. Richard Marner plays an excellent role of the Russian president, who has no idea what his own country is doing, but takes control when it is time.
The movie was an on the edge of your seat type of movie. It had me yelling at the characters and holding my breath. I was even crossing my fingers and toes while praying for just a little more time. Ben Affleck played his role to the fullest!!
Being a former member of the US military I felt there was a lot of truth to this movie. Like for instance the president not listening or paying attention, departments not doing their jobs and no one taking the time to follow up on the "why" of it all. The sad thing about it was that the truth this movie showed could really get a lot of people hurt. I just hope there is a Ben Affleck type of person fighting on our side in this war against Iraq.
The clarity of the DVD was excellent, I wouldn't watch it any other way.
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