The Sum of All Fears (2002)
Grade: B-
Cast: Ben Affleck, Morgan Freeman, James Cromwell, Bridget Moynahan, Liev Schreiber, Alan Bates
Director: Philip Alden Robinson
Rated PG-13 for violence, disaster images, language


"The Sum of All Fears" is a simultaneously exciting and boring thriller, a film that so unevenly jumps from tedium to chilling precision that it ought to be diagnosed with multiple personality disorder. It is the latest adaptation of one of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan novels, and as Ryan, Ben Affleck has the exact same unsure qualities of the movie—it’s as if he can’t decide whether he wants to give a good performance or not. At times, he works, and at others, he doesn’t. That’s really the briefest, most correct way to describe the film that surrounds him.

After the president of Russia dies, Bill Cabot (Morgan Freeman, never faltering in material that is below him—this is ultimately one of those cases) recruits Ryan for advice, because the CIA is becoming more and more paranoid about the situation. Then, a bomb is dropped in Baltimore during the Super Bowl, and Ryan has to, of course, single-handedly save the world as he realizes that maybe suspicions were wrong and Russia wasn’t involved in the bombing. I’m having trouble explaining this, and the movie did too, so it isn’t entirely my fault.

I am coming off wrong, because this movie is not at all as incompetent as I am making it sound. It is actually very, very smart, with a complicated plot that unravels and never fails to surprise us. It’s just that now its flaws are apparent, and there are many of them. The biggest flaw is probably that the beginning of the film is very boring, but it soon picks up its pace and I was involved through the rest of the running time.

The chilling precision I spoke of above is depicted best in the bombing scene in Baltimore. Is this as terrifying as it is because of the events on September 11th? I don’t know. All I know is that my jaw dropped in a way it hadn’t since "Black Hawk Down." Director Philip Alden Robinson directs this scene so well (as well as the superbly edited scene later in the film where the terrorists responsible get their inevitable payback) that it makes you want to forgive the flaws. But that’s hard. How can I forgive that the beautiful Bridget Moynahan (playing Affleck’s girlfriend) is a one-note piece of cardboard? And how can I forgive a film that can’t describe its plot well enough for me, so that I don’t figure the whole thing out until talking to my friends afterwards? It is not that "The Sum of All Fears" is confusing per se, but the filmmaking certainly makes it come close. I don’t want to be scratching my head through the whole film trying to keep up with the script and then realize later how easy to comprehend it is.

Ben Affleck is occasionally good, but he hits the wrong notes on occasion because he doesn’t seem to realize the problem with the script—Ryan must never be incorrect. If Affleck had realized the annoyingly clichéd perfection in his character, he may have been able to distract us by creating slow realizations for the character, but he sometimes makes the script’s shortcomings all the more recognizable. Morgan Freeman can do no wrong, and most of the rest of the cast cannot either. I never pictured the farmer from Babe (James Cromwell) playing a president, but he pulls it off here. Liev Schreiber is good enough for me to think he would have made a better Ryan that Affleck.

Still, despite its flaws, this is a good movie. I cannot quite rate it **½, because it is too powerful, and because of its problems, it just barely escapes with *** (I’m giving it the same grade as the infinitely more entertaining "Attack of the Clones," and that’s why I prefer an A-F grading scale, but that’s another story). It is a very good thriller that I will not hesitate in recommending, and I can even say that I would not mind watching it again.


Alex, July 2002