Film Review - The Sum of all Fears (2002)

The Sum of all Fears is the fourth Jack Ryan film and this time Ben Affleck stars as Dr. Ryan, an analyst for the CIA and the story here concerns an old nuclear bomb found in the Israel Desert and sold on the Black Market, a bomb that could potentially lead to war.

The Sum of all Fears does not end this run of Jack Ryan movies on a high note, in fact this movie is pretty bad and also rather forgettable, mainly due to the fact that the film's storyline is confusing (taking you to all sorts of places at once) and Ryan himself doesn't feel like a key player in averting the disaster.

Now you contrast that with 1990's The Hunt for Red October and in that film there really feels like something at stake with the Silent Drive in a Russian Submarine and in the wrong hands could shoot a bunch of its missiles at a major city and no one would have time to counter attack before it was all over whereas here there's a lot of talk about a bomb that could do great damage and you just don't care about it, it has nowhere near as much weight as the Caterpillar did in Red October.

The other thing that bothers me about the film is that Ryan himself doesn't feel like a key player in his own movie and Affleck is horribly miscast in the role, Ryan in the book doesn't come across as a macho action man, he's an analyst by nature and a man who doesn't rush headlong into combat without thinking things through first.

And that's what he does in Red October, he thinks it through, comes up with a theory and only goes into combat because he has to, Alec Baldwin captured the character of Ryan very well and he felt like the central player in that film whereas here Ryan feels like an afterthought, a character shoehorned into proceedings that are for the most part happening without him.

There are however some good things I liked, mainly some of the cast, James Cromwell, Liev Schreiber and Morgan Freeman are all quite good here and it was nice to see Schreiber on the side of good this time, a pity he hasn't done it more often.

So all in all, this movie is not worth your time though the Hunt for Red October is, after that film the series just got worse and worse and seemed to forget about the source material by Tom Clancy, hopefully Kenneth Branagh and Chris Pine can deliver a solid reboot next year, they're both good choices hopefully they can deliver the goods as well, 1 out of 5.