Ben Affleck tackles nuclear weapons in super-spy thriller 'The Sum of All Fears'

By Marshall Fine
The (Westchester, N.Y.) Journal News

THE SUM OF ALL FEARS (Rated PG-13 for profanity, graphic violence, adult themes) Three Stars (Good) Associated Press Conveniently plotted and a shade too sure of itself, this Tom Clancy thriller still manages to evoke chills, in its story of an extremist plot to explode a nuclear device in the United States. Starring Ben Affleck, Morgan Freeman. Directed by Phil Alden Robinson. Paramount Pictures, 120 minutes.

Now Clancy — and director Phil Alden Robinson in the new film of "Sum" — create a Sept. 11 with the requisite Hollywood ending. No matter — it's still chilling stuff to contemplate.

Indeed, "Sum of All Fears" perfectly describes everyone's nightmare scenario at this point in our history: a missing nuclear warhead, reconfigured into a bomb the size of a soda-vending machine, brought surreptitiously into an American city and detonated by zealots.

But there are other issues as well. Before "Sum of All Fears" reaches its conclusion, the notion of mutually assured destruction will have been given a thorough inspection cruise. It's not a fun ride.

For this fourth adaptation of Clancy's adventures of CIA analyst Jack Ryan, writers Daniel Pyne and Paul Attanasio (a former Washington Post film critic) rewrote the chronology of the series. Where Ryan was portrayed as an increasingly senior CIA figure by Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford, the new film goes back to Ryan's early days in the agency, when he was still a one-time academic and former Marine working as a low-level expert on Russia for the CIA. But the story is set in the present day.

After the death of a Russian president and the ascension of a new leader, Ryan is called in by CIA director Bill Cabot (Morgan Freeman). It seems that Ryan has done extensive research on the new leader, Nemerov (Ciaran Hinds) — so when there is a new attack in Chechnya, Ryan is considered the expert on President Nemerov's motivation and response.

Even as he's accompanying Cabot to Moscow to meet Nemerov, another plot has been put into motion: the discovery and sale of a nuclear warhead (lost by the Israelis during the Six Day War), which has been purchased by a group of right-wing extremists, led by Richard Dressler (Alan Bates), an Austrian businessman.

Working with American traitors and Russian mercenaries, he uses the nuclear device to create the illusion that the United States and Russia are attacking each other, hoping to trigger a war from which fascism can again emerge as the ruling system.

Clancy's world is one of mammoth, elaborate conspiracies and virtually super-powered American spies. The joke is that Ryan, the former Marine, has no urge to be a field agent engaged in derring-do; he is partnered with Clancy's super-spook, John Clark (Liev Schreiber), a spy so skilled he can move with impunity around the former Soviet Union, doing James Bond-like dirty work in search of the truth about the plot.

It's not hard to find reflections of this film in the real world, from the attack itself to the intelligence agencies helpless to stop it — except for the lone voice of an unheeded analyst who tries to save the day.

Affleck has a certain self-conscious charm that works here, as the low-level guy who knows how far over his head he is. He makes a likable voice of reason in a film where cool heads seldom seem to prevail.

Freeman brings a slyness to Cabot, the CIA chief who sees big things for Ryan. James Cromwell is also strong as the president, who must contemplate launching a nuclear attack that could end the world.

The plotting is way too convenient at times and the deification of CIA wonks seems to hit a sour note, given recent events. Still, if the measure of a movie is its ability to make you think about the ideas it contains, "The Sum of All Fears" is a success in many of the ways that count.

Rated PG-13 (profanity, graphic violence, adult themes).