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The Sum of All Fears

The Sum of All Fears arrives in theaters at a time when feverish "breaking news" of troop movements at the Indian-Pakistani border and suicide bombings along the Gaza Strip interrupt our regularly scheduled programming with alarming frequency. Tom Clancy?s spy thriller, first concocted as escapist entertainment, now plays out as frighteningly possible reality.

Fears, directed by Phil Alden Robinson (Field of Dreams) from a script by Paul Attanasio (Quiz Show), is the latest film adaptation in Clancy?s canon of espionage thrillers tethered to one another by the central character of CIA analyst Jack Ryan. This new film reinvents the series by casting Ben Affleck as a junior-grade Ryan. Less prequel than re-launch, this film positions Ryan as a rookie historian toiling in the bowels of Langley. One day he is plucked from obscurity by Intelligence Chief Bill Cabot (Morgan Freeman) to lend valued insight into some questionable maneuvers by Russia?s new rock-n-roll premier. The film essentially ignores the timeline etched in the films The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger by retrofitting Ryan?s early beginnings to the present time.

By setting the film in the here and now, as if ripped from today?s headlines, Fears garners an unexpected charge. What may have played as a fanciful doomsday scenario a year ago is now an omnipresent worry for millions.

The plot of both novel and movie centers upon a devastating nuclear blast in the continental United States, carefully choreographed to spark World War III between the United States and Russia. Some changes were made in pre-production to the film?s plot, mostly in the recasting of the film?s villains from the evil Arab extermists of the novel (thus skirting box-office boycott) to the more socially acceptable (but less likely) villainy embodied by neo-Nazi fascists. These villains, led by a billionaire Austrian industrialist (Alan Bates), aim to sit idly by while these two nuclear powers obliterate each other - thus paving the way for neo-Nazi supremacy. But they may want to check their homework, as the plan lacks one key component - perhaps a copy of Surviving Nuclear Winter for Dummies is in order.

Though these malevolent machinations could be perceived as the plot du jour of any James Bond thriller, the events of the past year have traumatized a nation into thinking the unthinkable can happen, at any moment, without warning. In Clancy?s 1995 novel Debt of Honor terrorists crashed a jumbo jet into the White House, a sober prediction of things to come. In the early hours following the attack on the World Trade Center, CNN hosted commentary by Clancy himself as he recounted that novel?s fanciful plot development and bemoaned a world in which an author?s fictional invention had become a blueprint for real world terrorism.

Due to this heightened awareness of the possibilities, Fears's central plot twist - the detonation of a nuclear bomb during an unnamed Super Bowl in the heart of Baltimore - becomes a bone-chilling image. Even though I knew it was coming due to the trailer (damned misinformed marketing drones), I was still hammered in my seat. With the image of the twin towers still everpresent in my psyche, combined with the recent talk of boiling aggression in the Mideast, it?s impossible not to have a deep and visceral reaction. The sequence is like a single gunshot in the night, less disturbing for what is known than for the details the mind fills in.

Thankfully, Robinson wisely avoids a graphic trip to ground zero. When the blast first occurs, we are miles away in a remote Baltimore hospital, cued to the Super Bowl playing on a television set in the background. Our first indication that something horrible has happened is an innocuous blast of static on the television screen, followed in a split second by the arrival of a shockwave that rips everything asunder. Robinson paints the entire scene in vivid chaos. The screen is bleached. Sound deadens, replaced with only the howling of an eerie wind as soundtrack to the unfolding horror. It is a sequence of raw power, made all the more harrowing by the restraint shown in depicting it.

If only the rest of the film matched that intensity. After the attack, the plot springs into motion with the United States and Russia tossing away decades of careful brinksmanship and diplomacy in favor of aircraft carrier attacks and tense doomsday scenarios. Racing against time, Affleck?s Ryan becomes a man in swift fashion as he races to deduce the real identity of the terrorists in order to pull the world away from the brink of annihilation. Oh, and he?s worried about his girl too.

While the decision to re-launch the series is understandable (after all - James Bond has been lying about his age for decades), Ben Affleck makes a poor Ryan. Alec Baldwin played the role with greater wit, strength and intelligence in 1990?s The Hunt for Red October. That characterization remains the pinnacle for this series, a benchmark even the stalwart Harrison Ford couldn?t surpass. As embodied by Affleck, Ryan?s mental acrobatics seem less the product of bustling neural synapses than of a guy struggling to remember his next line. That frat boy smirk may work on the chicks, but not on this heterosexual reviewer. Affleck?s even more ill-at-ease with the action heroics that dominate the latter sections - which is surprising, given that his slighter Good Will homey Matt Damon displays fine hunting skills a few screens over in The Bourne Identity.

Among the cadre of fine character actors in supporting roles is Morgan Freeman. Freeman has spent the last decade playing variations on his trademark all-knowing sage. With him on our side, no challenge seems insurmountable. In Fears, Freeman takes his typecast role and blends in sinister shadings. He may look like your Granddad, but at the office he?s as nasty as you want him to be - orchestrating covert assassinations in the name of peace, justice and the AARP.

Finally, Liev Schreiber (the Scream series) takes over the role of government spook, John Clark, first played by Willem Dafoe in 1994?s Clear and Present Danger. As with the de-aging of Ryan, this is a leaner, meaner Clark. Schreiber plays him as a true soldier and patriot, while infusing him with pathos. One gets the sense that this murderous skullduggery is wearing on him, yet he trudges on all the same. Should Paramount Pictures continue with this new direction for the series, Schreiber?s Clark is a welcome addition.

Overall, the film is uneven. The first hour is absolutely riveting, with an intelligent screenplay that requires an attentive audience to connect the dots as quickly as our intrepid hero just to keep up. Following the blast, the film devolves into an exhausting series of tired confrontations and convenient discoveries; any store of suspense that something earth-shattering and genre busting might happen is already exhausted by the film?s midpoint. With one city nuked, the producers have played their shot at infamy and can now concentrate on speeding towards the heart-pumping conclusion and sunny denouement.

Though featuring a handful of brilliant sequences, The Sum of All Fears amounts to no more than a tired collection of recycled spy thriller maneuvers anchored by a weak lead. Glancing at the current box office receipts, there is no doubt that Paramount will greenlight further installments. Memo to the producers: give Central Casting a call.