2002 Directed by Phil Alden Robinson
When the president of Russia suddenly dies, a man whose politics are virtually unknown succeeds him. The change in political leaders sparks paranoia among American CIA officials, so CIA director Bill Cabot recruits a young analyst to supply insight and advice on the situation. Then the unthinkable happens: a nuclear bomb explodes in a U.S. city, and America is quick to blame the Russians.
Ben Affleck Morgan Freeman James Cromwell Liev Schreiber Bridget Moynahan Alan Bates Ciarán Hinds Philip Baker Hall Ron Rifkin Bruce McGill Colm Feore Josef Sommer Ken Jenkins Michael Byrne John Beasley Jamie Harrold Ian Mongrain Russell Bobbitt Al Vandecruys Richard Cohee Philip Pretten Alison Darcy Richard Marner Ostap Soroka Robert Martin Robinson Dale Godboldo Lee Garlington Stefan Kalipha Nabil Elouahabi Show All…
Andrew Neskoromny Isabelle Guay Michele Laliberte Claude Paré John DeMeo Caroline Alder Martin Gendron
Mel's Cite du Cinema Paramount Mace Neufeld Productions MFP Munich Film Partners GmbH & Company I. Produktions KG S.O.A.F. Productions
恐惧的总和, La suma de todos los miedos, Vsichki strakhove, Apolytos kindynos, Svi naši strahovi, Der Anschlag - The Sum of All Fears, Tsena strakha, Najhoršie obavy, Jack Ryan 4 - A Soma de Todos os Medos
War and historical adventure High speed and special ops Politics and human rights political, documentary, president, democracy or propaganda destruction, disaster, earth, scientific or mankind war, wwii, combat, military or duty spy, agent, intrigue, thriller or suspense action, explosives, action-packed, villain or exciting Show All…
Very satisfying dumb guy movie where neo-fascists use an Israeli nuke flatten to Baltimore, killing all your favorite characters from "The Wire." McNutty, Herc, Carver, Bunk, Omar, Bubbles, Prop Joe, they're all dead now.
This is probably the most purely "Tom Clancy" of all the film adaptations of his work. Despite swapping out the Arab terrorists of the book with a cabal of fascist academics, this still lets him indulge his primary fetish: portraying Russia as a country of dim, back-stabbing clowns and getting off imagining the US *almost* engaging in a nuclear exchange with them.
There's also a funny part towards the end where Jack Ryan is begging someone at the Pentagon to let him do his job as a CIA analyst, which he describes "getting the right information to the people in power" who would make the right choice if only they knew what he does. This movie came out in 2002 lol.
kind of alone as both a studio franchise thriller and a post-9/11 disaster movie (this was released only 9 months later) in that it forgoes conventional action movie car-chase/gunfight theatrics in favor of a lot of phone calls, with all parties involved trying to operate with the most reliable data they can obtain. cooler heads prevailing didn't stay fashionable as American heroism for very long but that doesn't prevent this from remaining weirdly timely today.
Cinematic Time Capsule
2002 Marathon - Film #86
The sum of all fears divided by the square root of Affleck equals 💤
"When I asked for your advice, I didn't mean that you should actually speak."
The Sum of All Fears is an action movie without any fight scenes. The reason Jack Ryan has so much potential which is so difficult to realize on film is that he gives us an action hero with a desk job. Beyond the simple immediate intrigue of a such a contradictory premise, this has the significant benefit of forcing a genre which too easily gets caught up in its own destruction to focus on dialogue and drama. The problem is that these movies lack the inspiration and guidance to really break free from the trappings of every other action movie.
Honestly, this movie was so bland…
"The Sum of All Fears" is the personification of studio mediocrity. I shaved two hours off my life as my eyes glazed listlessly whilst my brain dropped into second gear. Ben Affleck running around trying to stop WWIII or whatever, it was fine. It had none of the panache from Harrison Ford's run as Jack Ryan. I liked parts of this film but it definitely needed more Liev Schreiber who dominated every scene he was in. It's just a shame he was used so sparingly. Either way this was a modest thriller with a couple of neat moments. I guess you could make some joke about it being less than the sum of it parts or whatever.
I just can't fathom being in the position where you have to choose between nuclear war and not nuclear war and even ever thinking "nuclear war." If you are sitting on the biggest, most destructive arsenal in the history of the world, and you've been attacked, and your reaction is to angrily demand to start the end of the world, I just cannot sympathize with you. That isn't being strong. That isn't being clever. That isn't being compassionate. That isn't being defensive, even. That's probably not even nihilism; it's worse. It's a level of arrogance and disdain for life that is utterly foreign to me.
As this film shows a bunch of serious, shaky-cammed white men harrumphing about nuclear holocaust,…
A fun thriller indeed. The whole cast is quite nervous and with reason, since global destruction may be at hand. Ben Affleck is the famous character of Jack Ryan, and despite not being as iconic as Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford, he still does a good job with the role.
The first half is pretty good but the second is pretty bad and Affleck sucks in both.
They should have just let Schreiber play Ryan.
The message from this film is simple, fascists=bad, fascists with nuclear weapons=worse. For a film made in 2002, eight years after Clear And Present Danger came out, Jack Ryan is looking distinctly sprightlier than he did in 1994. Ben Affleck dons the Bat-Cape, no, sorry, wrong film, Affleck takes on the role of Ryan in his fledgling outing which is really a prequel to both of Ford's films in the role. I'd always thought this was the poor relation in terms of the Ryan films to date, that was until Kenneth Branagh shit the bed with Shadow Recruit, but on reflection this isn't as bland as I'd remembered.
Ben Affleck had a tough act to follow as Jack Ryan. Baldwin…
For its first half, The Sum Of All Fears decides to take a page out of Phillip Noyce’s two Jack Ryan films.
Not an action film, more of a spy / political drama than anything, and quite an engaging one. I don’t really think there’s much of a muchness going on here, in fact, it’s one of those films for a while that seems to get by off the back of a fairly interesting plot and a whole raft of fine performances.
Indeed, the only real obstacle it encounters is getting used to the fact that this is set before Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. It doesn’t prove to be much of one, with Ben Affleck and Bridget…
