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About two-thirds of the way through The Sum Of All Fears,
I realized I was seeing something I hadn’t seen in years:
an action movie that respects action, that appreciates the
undeniable impact of pyrotechnics without wallowing in its
own look-at-me, CGI-enhanced glory. The nuclear bomb that
rips through a Baltimore football stadium (don’t get mad,
it’s in the previews) is the culmination of a carefully constructed
series of events. These events inevitably lead to that moment
when time stops, and the only question left isn’t, “What’s
next?” but “Can there be a next?” Action becomes more than
a special effect. It becomes the mean to an end.
Based on the fifth novel in Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan
series, The Sum Of All Fears introduces Ben Affleck
as the third actor to portray Ryan (after Alec Baldwin
and Harrison Ford). While the story has been rewritten
to accommodate the younger Affleck and to change up the villains
(Arab terrorists, in a wonderfully PC move, have been replaced
with last century’s villain of choice, the stock neo-Nazi),
the basic premise remains intact. A nuclear warhead, missing
for years after being lost in the Arab-Israeli war of the
1970s, is suddenly found and becomes a pawn in the engineering
of war between the U.S. and Russia by a smaller entity (an
Austrian politico played by Alan Bates) for the benefit
of his fascism-driven vision. It’s playground diplomacy on
an epic scale, complete with the cunning little shrimp and
the bullies on either side holding him to the ground.
Led by CIA Director William Cabot (Freeman, once again
bringing with him that unique ability to communicate at once
an air of sophistication and his trademark deadpan smugness),
Ryan travels to Russia to meet the new Russian President (Hinds),
and subsequently becomes embroiled in Richard Dressler’s (Bates)
plan to forward his anarchic views through nuclear war between
the world powers.
As the strongest factor in The Sum Of All Fears, director
Phil Alden Robinson shows a real flair for staging
chaos both organized and frenzied. In one particular scene,
during a dinner party at the White House, a crisis emerges
and cell phones begin ringing all through the room as if sounding
in the apocalypse itself. The Super Bowl portrayed in the
film has the electricity and dynamism of a rock concert about
to split at the seams. Robinson presents disorder as a symptom
of the clash between power and the mob, that unholy business
of a country losing itself en masse. It shows in his direction,
in the way he reconciles the swarm of commotion with the devastating
impact of powerful men sitting around tables and quietly losing
control.
But the film’s politics are, ultimately, its vice. In an
transparent bid to not completely stereotype a nation as power-hungry
revolutionaries, Dressler the Man, and not Dressler the Austrian,
sits high as the sole figurehead of the fascist movement.
And yet, one still has to wonder about the possibly damaging
portrait this paints of Western European politics. Yes, in
the end, The Sum Of All Fears is still a popcorn picture,
but it’s fluff with an agenda. There’s purpose behind that
big budget, and responsibility comes with that. Few films
have gone as far as this one does to make its point. A nuclear
warhead is not prevented from destroying a major metropolitan
area. Russia and the U.S. do find themselves at de facto war.
It’s a very surprising development in a film at this point
in time (not even considering 9/11). The Sum Of All Fears
stands quite often on the knife edge between being a penetrating
political commentary and going lavishly out of control with
its message. There’s this strange pipe dream below its surface
of a kind of patriotic nihilism that threatens to swallow
its good intentions. This contradiction lies at the film’s
core, and it finally serves to cloud its vision.
Cole Sowell
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out
of 5
While we would never encourage anyone to destroy a video... 
